When we think of love everlasting, it usually comes with an “I Do” and a ring, but for Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, love takes a very different form. The actors are one of the longest-standing Hollywood romances, and their love is truly inspiring.
After hooking up in 1983 on the set of Swing Shift, the couple has steadfastly stood by each other and produced some absolutely adorable onscreen relationships. While Swing Shift might mark the start of both their onscreen and off-screen relationship, Hawn and Russell met nearly a decade before on a separate project when he was 16 and she was 21.
How did Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell meet?
The old saying, “man plans and fate laughs” has never applied more perfectly to a situation. Goldie Hawn has gone on record to say she never wanted to date an actor, but 40 years in a happy union proves that what we want isn’t always what we need.
The couple met nearly a decade before their eventual romance kicked off in 1983, on the set of Disney’s 1968 western musical comedy, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band.
Hawn remembers their first meeting fondly, “I was 21 and he was 16 and I thought he was adorable but he was much too young,” Hawn told Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4.
The film was Hawn’s breakout role (she played “Giggly Girl”) but Russell, who had a starring role, was several films into a 10-year Disney contract. Walt Disney himself declared Kurt, “a 15-year-old boy for whom I predict a great acting future.”
Russell remembers seeing Hawn during the auditions. The Big Trouble in Little China actor recalled his mother’s first impressions of Hawn during a Variety interview,
“My mom leaned into me and said, ‘You see that blonde with a funny haircut? She’s gonna get the job.’ And sure enough, she did. I thought she was awfully attractive. You couldn’t miss her. She just had this energy about her.”
Their interactions were limited, but the pair got a second chance 17 years later on the set of Swing Shift. Russell was again caught off guard by Hawn’s magnetic personality and good looks. During an audition where the pair read opposite one another, Russell was suffering from a terrible hangover. Though he knew he had met Hawn years before, it had been almost 2 decades since the pair had seen one another. He told Conan O’Brien,
“I just didn’t know in my mind what I was going to see. [Goldie] had a great body, and so the first that came out was ‘Man, you got a great figure.’ And it kind of came out quickly and it could’ve been wrong and she said, ‘Why thank you.'”
Hard to believe that 40 years of non-marital bliss started with one of the worst pick-up lines imaginable, yet here we are. Hawn hasn’t specifically commented on the terrible pick-up line, but it seems like it put some marks in his favor. She told PEOPLE, “He was so good-looking, but he had no pretense about him. I could tell right away he wasn’t a womanizer.”
But more than anything, Hawn pointed to how much the pair laughed together, how gentle he was with her 2 children from her first marriage, and their devotion outside of the confines of marriage.
“It’s not about the marriage,” she told PEOPLE. “It’s about the people and the relationship, and the will to stay together. And that’s a big one because if you want it, you can have it. You’ve got to give things up, but the joy and the excitement of being together and touching the toes of somebody at night is really a nice feeling.”