Only 24, and Kate Hudson is already marked. Cute, sunny and funny, on-screen and off, is just about what everybody thinks. The perception is not wrong. A bit limited, though, at least as far as the young actress is concerned.
“It’s funny, because I have a knack for comedy,” says the petite blonde, who though nearly halfway through her first pregnancy can still pour herself into a flattering shoulder-baring, very pink pantsuit.
“So, a lot of the roles that I get and that are really fun for me are comedic roles. But really, my easiest . . ., and not that anything I do is easy, but what comes more naturally to me, is dramatic roles.
“I think people are either funny or they’re not,” adds Hudson, who says she doesn’t talk shop with a master of the craft, her mother Goldie Hawn. “It’s not something that you can discuss. And I’m funny, I guess, but I’m not witty.”
“My husband’s funny, but I don’t have that quick, come-back-atcha humor. My humor is in my physicality, but I come from a much more dramatic place.”
While her latest movie release, “Le Divorce,” boasts a number of serious and even dire themes, Hudson was once again cast for her bright persona and ease with humorous situations. Adapted from Diane Johnson’s novel, the story’s main plot involves a pregnant American in Paris whose French husband takes up with another woman.
Naomi Watts (“The Ring”) plays that unfortunate married woman, Roxeanne. But it is her younger sister, Hudson’s Isabel, who attracts the most attention when she comes to help Roxeanne out, but also manages to enjoy all the trouble a young woman on her first visit to the City of Light can get herself into.
“We knew Roxeanne was, just by the nature of the part, going to be draggy and sad for a good lot of the film, though interesting in all that,” notes director James Ivory, who has studied the French-American love-hate relationship at various historical stages in such films as “Jefferson in Paris” and “A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries.”
“But I wanted a contrast to that. I wanted someone sunny and sort of light-hearted and enthusiastic and bright, which is what I think Kate is. So I thought it was a good balance.”
Hudson’s initial response to Isabel, however, was more like concern about how unbalanced she appeared on the page.
“When I first read the project, I asked questions like, does she come off too glib or selfish,” the actress recalls. “I didn’t have a grasp on what the character was, except the narrator.
The movie happens through her, but what is the journey that she goes through? I was interested, mainly, because it was James Ivory and it was three months living in Paris and a great cast. But as I started talking to everyone about the character, I realized that she’s not only the eyes of the movie, she’s its spirit. Everything around her is so confusing and dramatic, but she’s quite straightforward. Even though she causes drama, she’s really not interested in melding into it. So that’s kind of where I went and I became very excited by it.”
As you might expect from someone so concerned about the nuances of her role, she is one of the few people involved with the film who does not view it as a chucklefest.
“I didn’t consider this film a comedy when I read it,” she says. “I consider it a satire. It’s a comment, a comedy of manners. But I don’t think someone attempting to commit suicide is very funny. A movie like “How to Lose a Guy,” now that’s a comedy.”
How to “Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” released last February, was Hudson’s first and only $100-million-plus hit. Up to that point, she had appeared mostly in small independent features such as “200 Cigarettes,” “About Adam” and Robert Altman’s “Dr. T & the Women.”
Her two previous studio features, “The Four Feathers” and Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous,” were box-office disappointments, although the latter earned Hudson an Academy Award.
Expectations are high, however, for her next feature, Garry Marshall’s sentimental comedy “Raising Helen.”
“As far as feeling pressure,” Hudson says of living up to both critical acclaim and maintaining popular appeal, “I have this thing that to feel pressure is to literally destroy yourself.
And the second you start feeling your pressure, the work will never be as good because you’re too self-involved. When you’re acting, I honestly believe that your self does not exist.”
- Arab News Features 28 August 2003