Tragic Details About Goldie Hawn And Kurt Russell's Four Kids

Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell's relationship with their children illustrates the beauty of a blended family that genuinely enjoys each other's company and offers up unconditional love, regardless of blood ties. Nevertheless, Hawn and Russell's four kids each grew up in the public eye and in the shadow of their superstar parents, so they have also faced some noteworthy struggles.

Hawn and Russell first met in 1966 while filming "The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band," but sparks did not immediately fly. Hawn went on to marry Gus Trinkonis in 1969, divorced him in 1976, and wed Bill Hudson that same year. Hawn welcomed two children during her second marriage — Oliver Hudson in 1976 and Kate Hudson in 1979. Russell had also been previously married to Season Hubley from 1979 to 1983 and became a dad to son Boston Russell in 1980. After divorcing Bill in 1982, Hawn reconnected with Russell for the 1983 film "Swing Shift." This is when the pair became a couple.

While Hawn and Russell never walked down the aisle together, they started a family in 1986 when their son Wyatt Russell joined the bunch. The whole crew remains close, perhaps from weathering many storms over the years. From a life-changing injury to drug withdrawals, these are the tragic circumstances of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell's kids.

When Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson divorced, their son Oliver and daughter Kate were small children. As Kate told Howard Stern in 2016, Bill stuck around for a little while, but his presence dwindled over time (via People). Both Oliver and Kate had a tense relationship with their dad, and they have not been shy about discussing it. "I think we both probably suffered differently and very similarly to anybody who feels abandoned by a parent," Kate explained on SiriusXM's "Dirty, Sexy, Funny" with Jenny McCarthy. "We can laugh at the challenges that we faced because of it — together. To be honest, our dad, who we don't know very well, is really funny. So, it's funny because, you know, it's a catch-22. There's a part of that, our dad actually, from what I remember when we were younger, had a great sense of humor."

Although they inherited Bill's sense of humor, Kate and Oliver did not get much else from their dad during their formative years. Luckily, Kurt Russell stepped in as the father figure they desperately needed. The brother and sister refer to him as "Pa" and consider him to be their children's grandfather. "We're a very tight family. We all live very close to each other," Oliver told Us Weekly when asked about Goldie Hawn and Russell in 2021. "They're amazing people, amazing grandparents, amazing parents."

In 2015, Oliver Hudson posted to Instagram to celebrate Father's Day, using a bit of dark humor to poke fun at his biological father. "Happy abandonment day," he wrote, tagging his sister in a photo of a smiling Bill Hudson embracing a young Oliver and Kate Hudson. Kate made her own Father's Day post, which she dedicated to Kurt Russell. "Pa, just simply ... Thank you. Happy Fathers Day I love you to the moon and back," she captioned a closeup shot of the pair grinning.

Oliver later posted a photo tribute to Russell, too, but it was the abandonment post that went viral. Later, Bill sat down with the Daily Mail and publicly disowned his two oldest kids. "I had five birth children but I now consider myself a father of three. I no longer recognize Oliver and Kate as my own," he said. "I would ask them to stop using the Hudson name. They are no longer a part of my life." Bill went on to criticize Oliver's Father's Day post, adding, "[Oliver] is dead to me now. As is Kate." That said, in 2024, Bill and Kate revealed that they were slowly taking steps to rebuild the relationship. Oliver, for his part, posted a childhood photo with his father to Instagram — with no snarky caption this time.

Since 2019, Oliver Hudson and Kate Hudson have co-hosted "Sibling Revelry," a podcast in which they explore sibling relationships and family dynamics in a funny yet brutally honest way. Although they bring on guests to chat, some of the best parts of the podcast are when the Hudson duo discusses their own familial bonds. This somewhat backfired for Oliver in 2024, when he was forced to walk back a comment he made about his childhood. "My mother was the one that I had almost the most trauma about, interestingly enough, because she was my primary caregiver and I was with her all of the time," he said (via Page Six). "I felt unprotected at times. She would be working. She had new boyfriends that I didn't really like ... This is my own perception as a child who didn't have a dad and needed her to be there, and she just wasn't sometimes."

After his comments made headlines, Oliver clarified in a later podcast episode that he used the wrong language and that many were missing the proper context. Oliver made the original comments while discussing his experience with the Hoffman Process course, a week-long retreat where individuals trace their negative patterns back to their childhood. Oliver was essentially resentful of his mom's fame as a kid, but as he explained, "There was no trauma coming from my mother."

As the son of two superstars, Wyatt Russell has never known a life outside of the public eye; however, it was never his original intent to follow his family into the entertainment business. No, Russell grew up with dreams of becoming a star hockey player. While he is certainly not the only actor to have started out as an athlete, Russell also had family connections in the sports world: His paternal grandfather played baseball for the Carrollton Hornets in the Georgia-Carolina League, and his father balanced a childhood acting career with baseball. In the early 1970s, Kurt Russell played on multiple minor league teams before an injury to his arm halted his trajectory. Eerily, it was also an injury that put an end to Wyatt's hockey career. 

Wyatt was only 15 when he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to play for the Richmond Sockeyes junior team. He then went on to play for four other teams before attending and playing for the University of Alabama in 2007. Two years later, he went to play hockey in Germany, followed by a stint in the Netherlands. But in 2010, at the age of 24, Wyatt saw his life change in an instant. "My whole right side, from my knee to my hip, is torn so I couldn't play anymore," he told the Times Colonist. "That was taken away from me, but I feel like it was fate, a godsend, because I wasn't going anywhere in hockey."

While Oliver Hudson has been getting steady acting work for decades and Wyatt Russell's acting career is thriving, Kate Hudson is by far the most famous sibling. She started her film career back in 1998, but Hudson's big break came in 2000, when she appeared as groupie Penny Lane in the enduring hit movie "Almost Famous." Not only was a close-up of Hudson's face the entirety of the movie poster — back when movie posters still mattered! — but her performance was widely praised. In 2001, Hudson was nominated for her first and only Academy Award for her supporting role in the film.

Although she did not win the Oscar, Hudson's fame skyrocketed. But before she could even rake in major dough with hits such as "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" and "You, Me and Dupree," Hudson found herself embroiled in a financial mess not of her making. In August 2001, the star filed a lawsuit against Margaret Miller, who served as her personal assistant from July 1999 to March 2001. Hudson claimed that Miller defrauded her to the tune of $63,000, which she used to pay for hotel rooms, clothes, beauty treatments, and more. The outcome of the case was never made public, but Miller denied the allegations and threatened to countersue for slander and wrongful termination. There are no reports of an actual countersuit.

In nearly any other family, Oliver Hudson would be the center of attention. Hudson has appeared in dozens of projects since making his screen debut in 1999, including enough TV shows that you would need two hands to count his series regular roles. That includes multi-season hits such as "Rules of Engagement," "Nashville," and "The Cleaning Lady." Although he is indisputably a success, Hudson has expressed feeling lesser than on a regular basis. "I put a lot of pressure on myself to provide, to match the standards of my family, which is not put upon by them in any way. That's my own bulls***," he explained on "Sibling Revelry." "Kate's a star, my little brother now is a f***ing star, my parents are stars and, like, people would kill for my career."

These feelings of inferiority are not new for Oliver, who calls himself "the black sheep" of his family. While he claims to be lacking in self-concept clarity and in a near-constant state of existential crisis, Hudson also tries to talk himself out of his more negative thoughts. "It's about self-love [and] self-worth, which I have been lacking all my life," he said. "So, to look at myself in the mirror and to actually feel that and say it honestly, I'd probably use humor to deflect those true emotions. But I do wake up, like, 'It's gonna be a great f***ing day today.' I try to create that energy."

It took time for Kate Hudson to welcome Kurt Russell and his son Boston Russell into her heart. "For me, it felt like such a big moment because it was like, 'My mom is madly in love with this guy.' For me, at the time, it was like, 'Is this going to be my dad?'" Kate said on "Sibling Revelry" (via People). "And I was meeting his son [Boston], which meant, 'Does this mean that this is my brother?' It was a lot to handle at such a young age." Considering Kurt and Goldie Hawn never married, young Kate's confusion makes sense. There was never a formal or legal binding between the couple, nor the children. 

While the siblings are now close, very little is known about Boston. Unlike his parents, Kate, and brothers Oliver Hudson and Wyatt Russell, Boston is not in show business. The closest he got was serving as a production assistant on the 1996 film "Executive Decision," starring none other than his father Kurt. In fact, Boston seems to go through efforts to keep everything very private, not even maintaining any public-facing social media accounts. This all suggests that fame may be a burden to him, or at the very least that he is uncomfortable with the spotlight. While he has made a handful of red-carpet appearances to support his kin, there are no public details on Boston's basics, like what he does for work or his relationship status. 

Every big-name celebrity has been the subject of at least some rumors, but certain stars tend to get targeted by the tabloid media more than others. Many of them are young women, and never was that more of an issue than in the early aughts — something we were all reminded of when the documentary "Framing Britney Spears" made waves in 2021. Although public discussion of famous folks' weight is still unfortunately a common occurrence, headlines like "scary skinny" and "dangerously thin" are much rarer today. But in the early 2000s, it was not uncommon for publications to suggest female celebrities were suffering from eating disorders. 

This is what happened to Kate Hudson in October 2005, when the British version of National Enquirer published a story entitled "Goldie Tells Kate: Eat Something! And She Listens! Star confronts daughter after photographs show her painfully thin." The article, which described Hudson as "skin and bones," implied that she "recklessly and foolishly endangered her health" by not eating.This inference to anorexia nervosa led her to sue the magazine's publisher for libel. "The allegations that I sued over were blatantly false, and I felt I had no choice but to set the record straight by challenging them in court," the star said in a statement. The company provided a financial settlement and apologized for the "deep distress and acute embarrassment" caused by the article (via Today).

If you need help with an eating disorder, or know someone who does, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

While the 2016 film "Folks Hero & Funny Guy" failed to make a dent in the cultural landscape, we are guessing Wyatt Russell has no regrets about accepting a starring role in the feature. After all, it is during that particular production that the actor met his now-wife, Meredith Hagner, who co-starred in the film. The pair married in September 2019 at Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell's mountain home in Aspen, Colorado.

Cut to 2021, which was a huge year for the duo. It is the year that Wyatt joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, by way of "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" series on Disney+, which is widely regarded as his breakthrough role. It is also the year that the couple welcomed their first child, Buddy Prine Russell. However, when they sought to expand their family once more a few years later, Wyatt and Meredith suffered a tragic miscarriage. 

"I lost my last baby in the early second trimester. It was horrendous. Sharing this because I thought it would break me and I felt so alone until realizing it was so common. If this has been you — I'm with you," Meredith posted to her Instagram Story in July 2024 (via Hello!). Neither Meredith not Wyatt shared the news of their devastating loss when it happened, so the exact timeline is unclear. By the time of Meredith's post, she had already given birth to a rainbow baby — son Boone Joseph Russell, born in February 2024.

Oliver Hudson Instagram grid is littered with photos of his outdoor adventures and clips from his podcast. the star has become known for his quippy captions, sarcasm, and goofball humor (and for showing off his bare butt on more than one occasion). Hudson's outward displays of cheekiness and nonchalance is a stark contrast from how he feels inside, however. The star has vulnerably spoken about his mental health struggles, including his lifelong anxiety disorder and the harrowing experiences he has had trying to wean himself off of antidepressants.

In December 2021, Hudson told People he quit Lexapro the previous summer, after five and a half years on the drug. "I thought, 'I'm done with it. I don't need it anymore,'" he said. "And I tried to fight it off all summer, but it was just really going back to my 20s, horrible, horrible. And so I was like, 'You know what? I'm not ready. I have to go back on it.'" This was not new territory for the star, who also experienced terrible withdrawals when he tried to stop taking Celexa years prior while on location filming "Nashville." "I was weaning off, and I thought I was doing it correctly, and it just took me to a place. It was just so debilitating. It's hard to even explain, I mean, complete dissociation, I was a mess," Hudson explained on a May 2024 episode of "Sibling Revelry."

Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell are one of those rare Hollywood love stories, an enduring relationship that has lasted decades in a town that is known for partner jumping. Sure, both stars were previously wed prior to getting together, and they never actually tied the knot, but their over four decades-long relationship is still inspiring. Oliver Hudson has also been lucky in love, having married wife Erinn Bartlett in 2006, while Wyatt Russell wed back in 2018. Their sister Kate Hudson, however, has had a tougher time finding long-lasting love — and not for a lack of trying. Hudson's list of exes includes many famous names, including Owen Wilson, Dax Shepard, Alex Rodriguez, and Nick Jonas.

All of these relationships occurred after Hudson's divorce from Chris Robinson, who she married on Y2K after a whirlwind eight-month romance that saw the couple move in together days after meeting. Hudson has one child with Robinson — son Ryder Russell Robinson — and the pair maintain an amicable relationship. Still, she has said that their 2006 split and 2007 divorce was extremely difficult. "I really did grow out of it, and it was a very hard breakup," Hudson confessed on "The Howard Stern Show" in May 2024 (via People). Hudson was subsequently engaged to Muse frontman Matthew Bellamy — father of her son Bingham Hawn Bellamy — but their three-year engagement ended in 2014. In 2021, the "Something Borrowed" star wound up engaged to Danny Fujikawa, with whom she shares daughter Rani Rose Hudson Fujikawa. Here's hoping she can finally find that happy ending!