Goldie Hawn describes ‘muddy road’ to stardom

Goldie Hawn and partner Kurt Russell.

Hollywood's archetypal ditsy blond Goldie Hawn went through dark days before she made it big, but the relentlessly upbeat actress said she took away something positive from even her worst moments.

The title of her new memoir, Goldie, A Lotus Grows in the Mud, was inspired by an Indian guru who told her the most beautiful flowers grow in the most unlikely surroundings - a metaphor she felt applied to her own life.

"The painful experiences, believe it or not, I had worked through, so there was a lot of emotion, but not pain" when she wrote the book, the 59-year-old actress said in an interview on Thursday.

Early in the book, which was published this week and co-authored by journalist Wendy Holden, Hawn describes one Christmas Eve when she woke to find a man kneeling by her bed, fondling her under the covers.

Frightened, she shouted for her mother. The intruder, a friend of her older sister, fled. Comforted by her mother, Goldie, 11 at the time, was upset, but able to recover. And, she writes, "I never lost my trust in the male sex."

"This episode and its aftermath were such an important aspect of my growth in terms of sexual energy and understanding, and I will forever be grateful for the way it was handled," Hawn wrote, praising her mother's openness.

As with many Hollywood Cinderella stories, Hawn had a number of gritty encounters in her early career, including a $US30 ($NZ41) gig as a go-go dancer at a sordid New Jersey club.

On another occasion she was tricked into auditioning for Al Capp, only to realise the well-known cartoonist - who had changed into a revealing robe - was not interested in her acting skills.

"Mr Capp, I will never, ever get a job like this," she told him. She said he replied: "Then go back and marry a Jewish dentist. ... You'll never get anywhere in this business, Goldie Hawn."

Hawn described with glee how several years later, when she was a household name, she sent him a telegram congratulating him on a success. It read: "As you can see, I didn't have to marry a Jewish dentist after all."

Even when her career took off with the television comedy series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and she won an Oscar for Cactus Flower and garnered praise for Private Benjamin, Hawn had her share of troubles - depression, divorce, nearly losing her newborn son to illness and the death of her father.

The cast of minor characters in the book runs from Elvis Presley - who told Hawn, "No wonder you're so funny. You look like a chicken that's just been hatched," - to Peter Sellers, Walter Matthau and longtime boyfriend Kurt Russell and daughter Kate Hudson, now a star in her own right.

But Hawn said readers should not expect to find her dishing the dirt. "I don't know why people tell stories about other people," she said.

She doesn't spare herself, however, describing humiliations at a school dance where she played the wallflower, and a temper tantrum she threw in India while filming a documentary.

"It's very important to laugh at yourself," she said in the interview. "Taking yourself too seriously is a bad thing."

- REUTERS