15 February 2015
Newsdesk
Goldie Hawn sought psychological help when she first hit the big time.
The 69-year-old rose to fame on situation comedies and sketch shows in the 1960s. Goldie was only in her early 20s at the time, and admits she found it hard to adjust to people’s views of her.
“It was very stressful. People perceived me as this funny, crazy, spontaneous girl, but I didn’t think they knew me very well,” she revealed to the Harvard Business Review. “So I did seek psychological help, and it prepared me to understand the separation between perception and reality. I was then able to embrace my fans, embrace my world, with a more reasonable view of what was happening to me, and continue in my work.”
Goldie soon made the transition to film, taking on roles in hit movies Overboard, The First Wives Club and Death Becomes Her. She also won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in 1969 movie Cactus Flower.
But despite her success, Goldie still thinks that there is gender bias in Hollywood. She feels like the big money goes to “kids and young men” and that smaller movies like ones she has made in the past aren’t happening any more.
“For instance, First Wives Club. We were all women of a certain age, and everyone took a cut in salary to do it so the studio could make what it needed. We all took a smaller back end than usual and a much smaller front end,” she explained. “And we ended up doing incredibly well. The movie was hugely successful. It made a lot of money. We were on the cover of Time magazine.”
But two years later, when the studio came back to Goldie and her co-stars Diane Keaton and Bette Midler, they were offered the same deal.
“We went back to ground zero. Had three men come in there, they would have upped their salaries without even thinking about it,” she said. “But the fear of women’s movies is embedded in the culture.”
