In 1979, actress Goldie Hawn was a red-hot commodity in Hollywood when she purchased a house in Pacific Palisades. The former star of 1960s television’s Laugh-In had already won an Oscar for her supporting role in the 1969 film, Cactus Flower. She had other movie successes behind her, such as Butterflies are Free and Shampoo in 1975. Indeed, Hawn’s infectious giggle and big eyes had become a proven box-office draw by the time of her Palisadian purchase.
When the multi-talented comedian, actress and director moved into 788 Amalfi Drive in the Riviera, she was either on the set or on the cusp of basking in the success of the movies Seems Like Old Times and Private Benjamin, both released in 1980.
In a few short years, the house was renovated. It would not be surprising to hear she had been deeply involved in the interior designing of the makeover. Some years before, Hawn had thought up some of the interior touches for a beach house she lived in on Point Dume in Malibu.
During the Amalfi Drive renovation, Hawn was a single mother. She and her two young kids stayed at her newly purchased beach house on Malibu’s Broad Beach. But a short time after Hawn moved back to her Palisades home, would changed. During the filming of her 1984 film Swing Shift, she met actor and a co-star on the film, Kurt Russell on the set. The couple fell in love.
Photo: Michael Oldham
Hawn told Beliefnet in a 2005 interview what first attracted her to the younger Russell. “What hit me,” she said, “was his comfort with himself. His ability to be so honest, and he wasn’t womanizing at all. He was like a buddy, and I thought, ‘God this guy is so cute and he’s got no stuff.’”
Besides Swing Shift, Russell was playing in such films as the 1983 release Silkwood about the time he and Hawn were beginning their romance. The stocky actor, who started in television as a young boy, had a simple approach to telling host Chelsea Handler of television’s Chelsea Lately how he and Hawn immediately liked each other’s company.
“We just had lunch,” Russell said. “It was very cool. I liked her, she liked me, and we decided to have lunch again.”
Russell became a welcome addition to Hawn and her kids in the newly renovated Amalfi house, just south of Sunset. Hawn and Russell had a child together in the mid-1980s. Russell was now a father twice over, being the proud father of a son from his previous marriage to actress Season Hubley.
For Hawn, the home on Amalfi Drive was exactly what she had wanted as a child. “When I was small, all I ever wanted to be was a wife and a mother, living in a pretty house with a picket fence,” Hawn wrote in her 2005 memoir called A Lotus Grows in the Mud. But Hawn would add in the book that as an adult in the late 1970s, she would find herself caught between her “picket fence” dream and the lure of movie success. There could be little doubt, the Palisades house with partner Russell, the kids and her continued movie successes gave Hawn a good balance of both worlds.
The Amalfi Drive house, built in the mid-1930s, was big enough for Hawn and company. The two-story property sits on nearly half an acre and it’s currently listed as having seven bedrooms and over 6,000 square feet. Perhaps Hawn did her fair share of the housekeeping, since early in her career she told a reporter she loved to clean house.
Off screen, Hawn enjoys hanging with her kids and grandkids. Recently, the actress with the million-dollar smile has been photographed on the local beach with her grandkids and family. When winter hits, Hawn and Russell often head off to the ranch they’ve owned together for years, just outside of Aspen, Colorado. There, skiing and family holiday gatherings are often the order of the day. Hawn also enjoys good wine and intimate dinners with Russell. She maintains her slim and fit looks by exercising several days a week.
Hawn also has a unique home-related hobby of sorts – paying visits to the 1927 duplex in Takoma Park, Maryland, where she grew up. Hawn once told The Washington Post, “Sometimes I just drive by and look and cry.”
Hawn’s childhood-house “bug” apparently was passed on to her daughter, actress Kate Hudson. Many years after Goldie sold her 788 Amalfi Drive home, Kate purchased it. Kate would eventually become its seller, too.
Hawn had sold the Amalfi Drive house sometime around 1990, when she starred in the comedy-action film Bird on a Wire. In the years since, Hawn and Russell would together purchase and sell other homes and property in the Palisades where they are considered family inside the community.
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