Goldie surfaces again - giggling

Web posted February 2, 1997

By Mark Kennedy
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Goldie Hawn is scanning newspaper headlines in a low-cut, skin-tight black cat suit and thigh-high leather boots.

Only the tiny pair of reading glasses perched on Ms. Hawn's nose is evidence that the veteran actress is now celebrating her fourth decade in show business.

She tucks away the glasses and then leans forward in her chair, as if to tell a secret.

``I'm back,'' she purrs sarcastically. ``I'm back and I'm bad.''

Indeed. This month, the 51-year-old actress has resurfaced from a four-year dry spell to follow up the wildly successful First Wives Club with the Woody Allen musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You.

The new role happily returns the comedian to her stage roots. A dancer since age 3, Ms. Hawn made her professional debut hoofing the cancan at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

``Dancing is the one thing I studied every day,'' she says, striding toward an apron-covered lunch trolley with tiny, elegant steps. ``That was my dream. It certainly wasn't to be a movie star.''

She also waited decades to be able to sing again. So Ms. Hawn belted out Everyone Says I Love You in her audition.

Woody Allen looked stunned.

``He went crazy. He didn't know I could sing,'' she recalls. ``He came over and said, `Oh God, you really have a voice!'°''

Then he told her to not sing it so much.

``So I sang it more simply and more talky, and I didn't hold onto notes as much. And that was good. But the other part of me was saying, `Dammit, I finally get a chance to sing, and now I have to tone it down.'°''

The irony isn't lost on Ms. Hawn, who's been asked to ham it up for most of her career.

It was during her two years aboard the late-1960s NBC variety show Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In that her goofy reputation was cemented.

Ms. Hawn was unmistakably zany. She frugged. She mugged. She wiggled maniacally between skits, slathered in bright body paint with psychedelic daisies pasted on her cheeks.

``I was 21 years old,'' she recalls. ``I was happy to have a job. And I became a star from that show. But I didn't have any idea what was happening at all. No idea.''

Early on, Ms. Hawn flubbed an on-air cue and collapsed into a fit of infectious giggles. The producer, George Schlatter, loved it.

``I just messed up my words, and that's how it started,'' she says, inhaling deeply from a cigarette. ``I realized that what was funny was me screwing up.''

Ms. Hawn pokes up her head, scanning the suite for an ashtray.

``My personality is very light,'' she insists, leaning over to tap ashes into a crystal bowl. ``I have a light personality and a very deep-thinking brain. Those two things are very different things.''

But viewers fell in love with the bubbly Ms. Hawn - and the archetypal blond ding-a-ling was born.

``Being a woman in this business isn't easy,'' she says, slowly shaking her mane of golden curls. ``Women are still trying to make women's movies. Men aren't making them.''

Her leap into film began auspiciously. In 1969, her first featured film role in Cactus Flower opposite Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman earned her an Academy Award for best supporting actress.

``I was this new, fresh thing on the scene, and everyone embraced her. But it really wasn't about the talent. I was a young ingenue,'' she says.

Wasn't she worried about typecasting?

She laughs, her trademark giggles filling the room. ``I was happy to have a job. Seriously, if you're frightened about taking that next step, just go get into bed, pull the covers up and call that a life.''

But the damage had been done.

``The reality was, of course, that I was typecast,'' she says rolling her eyes. ``People burning their bras called me the `ditzy blonde.' But all I wanted to do was work.''

She raked up nearly 30 movie credits as an actor and producer. In an industry in which nymphets don't usually age very well, Ms. Hawn is a survivor.