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Fresh off a busy awards season, the Oscar-nominated actor continues to chase what excites her&mdash;and says it's never really been about the spotlight.
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PHOTOGRAPHY Chantal Anderson
STYLED BY&nbsp;Danyul Brown
Kate Hudson is on her drive home after wrapping up some errands when she calls in for her L&rsquo;OFFICIEL cover story. A normal Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles, to be sure&mdash;and, even though she&rsquo;s Hollywood royalty, Hudson herself is strikingly down-to-earth.
What&rsquo;s remarkable about the moment, though, is the juxtaposition of precisely how mundane it is (at one point she gets distracted by some pedestrians attempting to jaywalk&mdash;stars, they&rsquo;re just like us!) with the fact that mere days before, Hudson was walking the Oscars red carpet in a custom Armani Priv&eacute; gown. Her role as Claire Sardina in Song Sung Blue had garnered her plenty of attention through the past award season, nabbing her Best Actress nominations at the Academy Awards, the BAFTAs, the Actor Awards, and the Golden Globes. I&rsquo;d seen her looking hot in a midriff-exposing Gucci dress at the Vanity Fair party and serving Old Hollywood in a flowing white Valentino gown at the Actor Awards. And while all of that sounds glamorous, it&rsquo;s also true that campaigning for awards is a notoriously grueling process.

So, frankly, I was surprised the mom of three&mdash;who shares son Ryder, 22, with ex-husband Chris Robinson; son Bing, 14, with ex-fianc&eacute; Matt Bellamy; and daughter Rani Rose, 7, with fianc&eacute; Danny Fujikawa&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t posted up at a five-star resort to catch up on some much-needed rest. Instead, the whole process had only served to reinvigorate her love of the business.

This moment doesn&rsquo;t feel personal. It feels like there are so many people along the way who are a part of it.

&ldquo;It becomes the culmination of knowing that there&rsquo;s been a job well done collaboratively&mdash;all the work that everybody did on Song Sung Blue felt seen by our peers. It&rsquo;s an amazing feeling to have made a movie that people are responding to, and to be a part of the community in what is being represented as the best movies of the year,&rdquo; Hudson says of her banner awards season run. &ldquo;It feels really wonderful, because the hope when you&rsquo;re making a movie is to make the best possible version of that film. It&rsquo;s an inspiring time when you&rsquo;re having this celebratory couple months, and it gets you excited to go back to work.&rdquo;
I try to push back on that a little bit; surely, it must feel good to be personally recognized by your peers, especially on such big stages. But Hudson is resolutely a team player.
&ldquo;Well, because I was raised in this industry, I never feel singular,&rdquo; she says simply. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s such a collaborative medium that this moment doesn&rsquo;t feel personal. It feels like there are so many people along the way who are a part of it.&rdquo;

Of course, it&rsquo;s worth noting that this wasn&rsquo;t exactly Hudson&rsquo;s first rodeo. She received nominations at all the same award ceremonies exactly 25 years ago for playing Penny Lane in Almost Famous, the role that would cement her status as a Hollywood A-lister. She&rsquo;s starred in more iconic movies&mdash;what kind of self-respecting millennial would I be if I didn&rsquo;t name-drop How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days?&mdash;and branched out into television. She&rsquo;s launched brands, released books and an album of music, and established herself as a permanent fixture on best-dressed lists.

Hudson is, in other words, a bona fide star. And still, more than two decades into her career, she just feels lucky to be here.
&ldquo;The difference between when I did Almost Famous and now is an entire two decades of career&mdash;relationships, people I&rsquo;ve worked with, successes, and failures&mdash;all of which are part of what it means to actually have a career in this business, which in itself is such a lucky way to live,&rdquo; Hudson says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just so grateful that I get to work. I feel like I&rsquo;ve had such incredible support; along the way you have people who really are rooting for you, and that means so much.&rdquo;
Throughout the course of our conversation, it becomes clear that this isn&rsquo;t just lip service, either; Hudson is truly a student of her fellow actors. At one point, she references Harrison Ford&rsquo;s speech when he accepted his Lifetime Achievement Award at the Actor Awards; at another, she paraphrases a Kristen Stewart quote about how acting is inherently submissive. She gushes about the way Ethan Hawke describes acting and how he gives back to young actors, and she goes out of her way to rave about her Song Sung Blue co-star Ella Anderson&rsquo;s capacity to create a character. Every interaction with another actor is an opportunity to learn something new about her craft.

Because I was raised in this industry, I never feel singular.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s really fun to talk to people about what it is that gives them the confidence to be able to feel like they can put that foot forward&mdash;you know, we all have a version of something that comes easy to us, and what comes easy to me might not come easy to someone else,&rdquo; Hudson explains. &ldquo;I like watching people find their process&mdash;that&rsquo;s exciting. I see it in my son [Ryder] where he&rsquo;s learning his own process. It takes time and then, the truth is, it doesn&rsquo;t stop. You&rsquo;re always learning something new.&rdquo;
I try once again to point out that maybe Hudson herself is a little special in this regard&mdash;that she has enough fame and experience under her belt to serve as something of a mentor to other actors. But that would involve assuming that she knows more than someone else on set, which is antithetical to her approach.

&ldquo;My philosophy is more about curiosity than it is about leadership. You can&rsquo;t enter a creative process like you know what&rsquo;s going to happen. The creative process is so exciting, because every time it&rsquo;s completely different and totally unknown. I enter every experience like it&rsquo;s new, like I don&rsquo;t know how it&rsquo;s going to unfold,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;I come in doing my part, which is understanding what makes me feel confident in the role and the character, but I do that so that when I&rsquo;m there, I can be flexible, not rigid. There are times where you might have an idea of the way something should unfold, but then you get in the room with five other actors, and that scene becomes something completely different and unpredictable.&rdquo;
There is one place where Hudson makes an exception to this rule: in her role as executive producer on her Netflix series Running Point, where she serves alongside showrunners Mindy Kaling and Ike Barinholtz. Her mom, Goldie Hawn, was one of the first actresses to produce her own films, which always served as a major inspiration to her growing up. Hudson would produce some of her own projects when she was younger, but found that the timing wasn&rsquo;t quite right for her as a new mom, so she took a step back after her 2009 film Bride Wars. As with everything else, she didn&rsquo;t want to do it until she knew she could give it her all&mdash;a quality that, naturally, makes her an excellent producer.

&ldquo;There are certain people that are really good at certain things, and all of them work together brilliantly, but not everybody is going to be great at everything. My thing over the years has been learning what moves you and where you can be beneficial to a project, especially when you&rsquo;re collaborating,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;If you get a whole bunch of people that you trust, that are really great at what they bring to the table, then you have the best possible working experience. You know when you&rsquo;re in a work environment that is unstable, that is unsure of itself, complicated, chaotic&mdash;and very rarely do those turn out to be the ones that have the most success.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s funny, I say, how the way Hudson talks about running a set so closely mirrors the way her character Isla Gordon talks about running a professional basketball team. After all, Isla spent the entire first season of the series (no spoilers here about the second, out in April) putting together all the right elements both on and off the court to make the fictional Los Angeles Waves a championship-winning team, empowering each individual to do whatever it was they do best. It sounds exactly like the way Hudson and the Running Point team work.

I accidentally hit a different nerve by pointing out these similarities. The role of Isla was inspired by real-life Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, who inherited the business through her family&mdash;which meant many critics and viewers attempted to draw parallels between Isla&rsquo;s nepo-baby origins and Hudson&rsquo;s own upbringing as the daughter of two famous actors [Hawn and Bill Hudson], which she is swift to shut down.
&ldquo;People always try to relate my family with the Busses in some way, and I&rsquo;m like, It couldn&rsquo;t be more different,&rdquo; Hudson insists.
&ldquo;Jeanie has had to maintain the most important team in sports history, and on top of that, the money and the franchise and everything that goes with it. For me, we&rsquo;re just actors. People are either gonna like what we do or they&rsquo;re not, and it doesn&rsquo;t matter what that means to the family. It just matters if we&rsquo;re gonna actually have a career doing what we love or not.&rdquo;

Hollywood might be a family business for Hudson, but it&rsquo;s still a business&mdash;one that she genuinely loves. I ask if there are goals or dreams left for her to achieve, and while she admits that she&rsquo;s always looking to scratch the creative itch of stepping into a role that scares her a little bit, at the end of the day, it&rsquo;s not about self-satisfaction. It&rsquo;s about being a team player. &ldquo;I just really want to make movies that people love. It&rsquo;s really simple for me,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I feel a responsibility as someone that loves this business, and grew up in it, and really wanted to make movies. I hope that I can make movies and shows that people really want to see.&rdquo;
But first, and more importantly, there&rsquo;s family. Hudson arrives home to a flurry of love and attention from her kids, which means we only have a few minutes left to wrap up our conversation.

We&rsquo;re just actors. People are either gonna like what we do or they&rsquo;re not.

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So, let&rsquo;s go back to Hudson&rsquo;s big award season run: What excited her the most wasn&rsquo;t her own nomination, but seeing how the biggest movies of 2025 were also some of the most lauded. She calls out the Oscar wins by Amy Madigan and Michael B. Jordan for films that, genre-wise, sit outside of the usual award-season fare, and praises blockbuster hits like Sinners and One Battle After Another for getting people excited to see movies in theaters again&mdash;because that is what Hudson wants. Not stardom for herself, not diva perks like custom red carpet gowns and glam teams, not even a personal driver to run her errands for her, but success for the entire movie business.
&ldquo;I do feel for everybody who loves this industry&mdash;whether you write about it or want to be in costume, hair and makeup, craft service&mdash;if you really love the magic of movies, I think we all have a responsibility to ask the question: How are we going to get people back in the theater?&rdquo; she muses. &ldquo;The movies are exciting no matter what they are; whether they challenge you to think about your own life, whether they make you bawl your eyes out, whether you&rsquo;re laughing your ass off, whatever it is that&rsquo;s pulling you and drawing you in, we all have a responsibility to be in it together.&rdquo;
After she signs off&mdash;exactly as cheery as you&rsquo;d want her to be&mdash;it&rsquo;s worth saying&mdash;I&rsquo;m left feeling sure that Hollywood couldn&rsquo;t ask for a better team player than Kate Hudson.
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HAIR: Renato Campora KALPANA
MAKEUP: Denika Bedrossian FORWARD ARTISTS
MANICURE: Brittney Boyce
SET DESIGN: Peter Guercacque
PRODUCED BY: Samantha Silvers, Meagan Judkins FOX &amp; LEOPARD, Yousra Attia, Eva Sealove Smart, and Ariel Sweetland
PHOTO ASSISTANTS: Peter Wintersteller and Alyson Aliano
SET DESIGN ASSISTANT: Brendan Barlow
STYLING ASSISTANTS: Maddie Phillips, Jordan Shaffer, and Carley Sullivan

Kate Hudson Is Far From Bored With Hollywood

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