Kate Hudson

Kate Hudson is an American actress whose breakthrough role as rock journalist Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination. She was born Kate Garry Hudson on April 19, 1979, in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actress Goldie Hawn and musician Bill Hudson, and was raised in Pacific Palisades and Snowmass, Colorado, by her mother and her mother's partner, actor Kurt Russell. She attended Crossroads School in Santa Monica.

She made her film debut in the road comedy Desert Blue (1998) at 19 and appeared opposite Anna Paquin in 200 Cigarettes (1999) and Stephen Frears's The Hi-Lo Country (1998).

Her performance in Almost Famous won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2001. She moved into romantic comedy with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) opposite Matthew McConaughey, which opened at number one in the United States, followed by Le Divorce (2003), Raising Helen (2004), You, Me and Dupree (2006), and Bride Wars (2009) opposite Anne Hathaway.

She returned to drama with Marshall Herskovitz's The Killer Inside Me (2010) and Rob Marshall's musical Nine (2009). In 2013 she co-founded the activewear company Fabletics with JustFab; the brand became a major direct-to-consumer label in athletic wear. Later film and television work included Wish I Was Here (2014), the Netflix musical Music (2021), Rian Johnson's Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), and the Apple TV+ series Truth Be Told (2019). She released her debut studio album Glorious in 2024.

Her given name Kate is a short form of Katherine, from the Greek Aikaterinē, the name of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Medieval folk etymology linked the name to the Greek katharos meaning "pure," although the original derivation is uncertain. The short form Kate has been in continuous English use since the late Middle Ages.