Oscar-nominee Kate Hudson did a cover shoot for InStyle’s March issue, and inside, she opened up about her choices in love, and why she regrets not focusing on a career in music.
The 41-year-old rocketed to fame in Almost Famous, and went onto iconic rom-com roles, like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days; all told, her films have made about $2 billion.
If you look at Almost Famous, Penny Lane is not a light character. I started my career off playing parts that were interesting,” she says. “But I like hopeful characters. I like characters who can cry and laugh at the same time.”
These days, she’s focused on her workout brand Fabletics and her liquor label King St. Vodka, plus her supplement company InBloom, and her family.
She says of being raised by Goldie Hawn and her partner Kurt Russell: “I grew up with parents who are old-school. And when you are a performer, you do everything. You dance, you sing, you act, and you try to make these skills go together. That's all I wanted to do. I wanted to sing, I wanted to dance, and then I wanted to act.”
Her unrequited love of singing may help explain her love of musicians. She shares her eldest son, Ryder, 17, with her ex-husband, Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson, and Bingham, 9, with Matthew Bellamy of Muse. Her current love, Danny Fujikawa, the father of her 2-year-old daughter, Rani Rose, is a guitarist.
Hudson says: “I would like to say they're attracted to me. I'm attracted to musical people, period. From the outside, yeah, I get it. 'Oh, I like a rock star,' or whatever. But that's not really what it is. The reason I connect so deeply with musicians…is because we all connect to music in a way that you don't have to explain. You just feel it, and it's something you love.”
She says a lot of it stems from her relationship with her biological father, Bill Hudson, a musician who “never was a father to me, so it was sort of like my way of rejecting that relationship.”
Her current project, Music, a film in which she does a lot of singing, has been healing. “For me personally, creating it with Sia was healing in so many ways. It was almost like someone giving me permission to say, 'You've earned this opportunity to express yourself through this.'” As a result of what she achieved in the film, Hudson says, “I've worked through it, and I feel more confident. Now I get excited about singing…and I don't have any expectations of what I want it to look like.”