Kate Hudson on balancing work and family: “It’s not difficult. It’s just exhausting. You just go home and you’re just really tired. You do have moments where you have to have that release, whether it’s having to punch a bag, go do a boxing class or whether it’s just to cry. It’s not of any sadness. It’s just a release of pure exhaustion because women especially know when they’re mothers, even when they don’t have careers, they made the career of being a mom. Your energy, you’re always on.
It’s the same thing as the first time I went away from Ryder. I’m in Europe and I wake up in the morning, or I come home that night after having dinner with everybody and I’m having a drink and I came home and I’m like, ‘I’ve got to get to sleep. I have to wake up in the morning and I’ve got to get Ryder.’ And I just went, ‘Ryder? Ryder’s not here.’ And I had that first initial moment of saying, ‘Wow,’ that’s always on your mind. So the only time you can really realize how exhausted you are is when you’re actually away from it.”
Kate Hudson on career choices now that she’s a mom: “I don’t know if what kind of movie or what kind of character, if being a mother will affect that. But what does affect it for me is time away, absolutely. And location. But as I’ve said, I grew up with very, very work-oriented parents and it was really admirable to know that my parents worked so hard. And at the same time, they were always present in our lives. They were always available to us at all times and yet they worked so hard. We got to really see them have their own life and strength. It was a really important lesson.”
Kate Hudson on mixing up genres: “It’s always been important for me to do that. It’s funny because I guess from an outside perspective it’s very different from being in my perspective, which is I’m 26. I really haven’t done very many films. Since ‘Almost Famous,’ I’ve done five? Six? I feel like my age, the roles…I don’t get to walk up to a big bin of amazingly dimensional fascinating characters. I get the young girl who’s starting out her life and is cute and perky and falls in love for the first time. And that’s great and some of them are really good, and some of them are better than others. But for me, I kind of looked at it like that’s why I’ve taken three years off in my career so far. I don’t want to rush anything. I don’t want to feel like I have to work all the time. I want to wait until I get to an age where I can play more dimensional roles.
Making comedies is so much fun. Hands down, fun, you laugh, it takes a lot of energy and boy, you’re almost even more exhausted doing that than when you’re running through forests all day. Because you have to be so energetic. But I feel like I’d be bored if I always did comedies and I feel like I’d be bored if I was always a dramatic actor. I just want to continually find things about the craft and find things about new characters, discover new things about myself and through them or in my life bring them to characters. It’s just the funnest business to be in. It’s the funnest job. When I get to wake up every day and I get to go on set, I have so much fun. It feels like, ‘Man, how lucky is that?’ I just love it.”
