The Films of Goldie Hawn

"I love making people laugh and by the way I still do that with the charitable efforts on my part because I believe that people need to laugh." (Goldie Hawn, *1945)

Goldie Jean Hawn is an American actress known for her roles in films such as The Sugarland Express, Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Overboard, The First Wives Club, and Cactus Flower, for which she won the 1969 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Beginning her acting career as a cast member of the short-lived situation comedy Good Morning, World, her next role, which brought her to international attention, was as one of the regular cast members on the 1968–1973 sketch comedy show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Her Laugh-In persona was parlayed into three popular film appearances in the late 1960s and early 1970s: Cactus Flower, There's a Girl in My Soup, and Butterflies Are Free. In her first major film role, in Cactus Flower (1969), she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Walter Matthau's suicidal fiancée.

After the Oscar win, her film career took off. Her popularity continued into the 1980s and at the age of thirty-nine, Hawn posed for the cover of Playboy‍‍ ' ‍s January 1985 issue.

Her acting career slowed down after leaving Hollywood in the late 1980s, but revived somewhat in the 1990s with films such as Death Becomes Her (1992) and The First Wives Club (1996) for which she received the Women in Film Crystal Award along with her co-stars Diane Keaton and Bette Midler.

In 1999 she was awarded Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year. Her autobiography, A Lotus Grows in the Mud, was published in 2005.