Immediately after graduating from high school, Hawn entered American University in Washington, D.C., as a drama major, but she dropped out after a year and moved to New York to pursue a career in show business. She worked for little profit as a go-go dancer in Manhattan nightclubs before relocating to Los Angeles. Hawn was eventually hired for her first television job as a dancer on a variety special featuring Andy Griffith. From this brief exposure, she signed with the William Morris Agency in 1967, which led ultimately to a regular role on the situation comedy Good Morning, World.

Although the sitcom didn’t survive its first season, Hawn landed a spot on the television comedy show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, appearing as a regular performer from 1968-1970. On Laugh-In, Hawn played a giggling but lovable ingenue whose infectious laughter and frequent line flubbing earned her two consecutive Emmy nominations (1969 and 1970), as well as a legion of fans. Early on during her Laugh-In days, Hawn also appeared briefly in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968), a musical comedy that also featured Kurt Russell—who was later to become Hawn’s lifelong companion.

Hawn’s first major film role, in the comedy Cactus Flower (1969), costarring Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman, earned her an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. This success led to a slew of film roles in which she excelled as the quintessential ditzy blond. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Hawn earned a total of six Golden Globe nominations in the category of Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Her commendable work includes her roles in Butterflies Are Free (1972), Shampoo (1975), The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976), Foul Play (1978), Private Benjamin (1980), and Best Friends (1982). Additionally, in 1981, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Private Benjamin, a comedy in which she played a spoiled Jewish-American princess facing comeuppance in the United States Army. The film marked Hawn’s producing debut and was her most successful endeavor to date. That same year, Hawn received a People’s Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture Actress.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Hawn produced many of the films in which she starred: notably Protocol (1984), a political comedy written by Buck Henry (Hawn plays an unlikely cocktail waitress-turned-political emissary); and 1986’s Wildcats. In 1987 she made Overboard, costarring her real-life sweetheart Kurt Russell, followed by a string of comedies featuring other prominent Hollywood actors, including Bird on a Wire (1990) with Mel Gibson; HouseSitter (1992) with Steve Martin; and Death Becomes Her (1992), directed by Robert Zemeckis, and costarring Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis.

From 1992-94, Hawn removed herself from acting to care for her sick mother, who died in 1994. In 1996, she returned to Hollywood to costar in the successful comedy The First Wives Club, in which she plays a woman who, along with her friends (Bette Midler and Diane Keaton), get even with the ex-husbands who dumped them for younger women. Also in 1996, Hawn starred opposite Alan Alda in Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You.

In 1999, Hawn and Martin reteamed for the Neil Simon-penned 1970 comedy The Out-of-Towners. In 2001, Hawn appeared in the long-delayed comedy Town and Country, directed by Peter Chelsum, cowritten by Buck Henry, and costarring Warren Beatty, Keaton, and Garry Shandling. Beatty and Hawn previously appeared together in $ (1971) and Shampoo.

A self-described "Jewish Buddist," Hawn credits her youthful and carefree persona to a daily practice of meditation and yoga. She has traveled to India almost every year since 1980, and in her home there is even an "India Room," which serves as a meditation chamber, and where, incidentally, she houses her Oscar.

In 1997, in addition to her other numerous awards, Hawn was the first female actor and producer to be honored by the American Museum of the Moving Image. In 1999, she received the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Award from Harvard University. Hawn married the actor and director Gus Trikonis in 1969, and they divorced in 1973. She married Bruno Wintzell that same year, but their marriage also ended in divorce. In 1976, she married the television comedian Bill Hudson, with whom she had two children, Oliver (born in 1976) and Kate (born in 1980). Kate, also an actress, earned a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for her first major film role in Almost Famous (2000). Hawn and Hudson divorced in 1980. Hawn has lived with her common-law husband, actor Kurt Russell, since 1982, and together they have one child, Wyatt, born in 1986.

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