After years as Hollywood’s romcom darling, Hudson is putting music at the centre of her career – and after her show-stealing turn in Song Sung Blue, the Oscar buzz is growing
The first voice I hear when I enter the hotel room to meet Kate Hudson belongs to her 21-year-old son, Ryder, who speaks from the end of a phone: “Love you, Mum!”
Doesn’t everyone? You don’t have to be related to Hudson to consider her a joyous proposition – a great performer who hasn’t yet made a great film. It was a quarter-century ago in Almost Famous, her breakthrough picture, that she first proved she could hoist a movie out of the doldrums while making the task appear as effortless as blow-drying her hair. Without her performance as Penny Lane, the rock’n’roll muse who describes herself as a “band-aid” rather than a groupie, Cameron Crowe’s dopey valentine to the 1970s of his youth would have been Almost Forgettable.
Her vitality propelled that film, and her face alone drove its marketing campaign, so it was only right that Hudson, then just 21, received an Oscar nomination. The years that followed brought a confetti-like flurry of romcoms, including How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Bride Wars, both smash hits despite their mood of seething bitterness. There were overlooked dramatic gambles (The Killer Inside Me, The Reluctant Fundamentalist), maximum-cringe misfires (the cancer weepie A Little Bit of Heaven, Sia’s crass autism drama Music) and the odd effervescent comeback, including Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, in which Hudson was superb as a dim-bulb fashion designer prone to facepalm moments.
