Actress Goldie Hawn said, in an interview with Variety, that Hollywood has changed from what it used to be and that she misses the days when it and the shows that are part of the allure of Hollywood, such as the Oscars, were all about elegance and glamour instead of being full of politicized virtue signaling.
Speaking on that, Hawn said “It used to be elegant. I’m not old-fashioned, but sometimes jokes are off-color. And I’m missing reverence. Things have become politicized. I want to see people in awe. I want to see people believing again. I want to see people laughing more in a way that isn’t just at someone else’s expense.”
She also commented on the Will Smith slap, saying “It’s indicative of our culture right now. I mean, you could look at it and say, ‘What the hell just happened?’ Somebody lost control. They lost their self-regulation. Their bigger brain wasn’t thinking, and they did something that was horrendous and also showed no remorse. That, to me, is a microcosm oftentimes of our world. Chris was brilliant — totally held on to and controlled his emotions, was able to stand with dignity. That’s an example of what we would like our world to look like. But, unfortunately, it isn’t right now.”
Variety, giving some background on Hawn and the Oscars, also noted that she wishes she had gotten dressed up to go get the Oscar she won in 1970, as she thought she wouldn’t win and so didn’t attend the ceremony. In that outlet’s words:
On the evening of April 7, 1970, the budding 25-year-old actress, with just two film credits to her name, was half a world away from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles when Fred Astaire opened an envelope and read her name as the best supporting actress winner for “Cactus Flower.” Instead of basking in the glow of television history, the “Laugh-In” star was sound asleep in London as an early call time loomed for her next film, “There’s a Girl in My Soup,” opposite Peter Sellers.
Hawn, now 77, is sitting in front of a fire in a woodpaneled study in her Pacific Palisades home as she recalls those few seconds that changed the trajectory of her life but that she never experienced firsthand. Throughout her trailblazing career, which includes such classics as “Foul Play,” “Private Benjamin,” “Overboard” and “The First Wives Club,” Hawn has created no shortage of indelible characters and experienced many artistic triumphs. But if she could get one do-over, she would haul her ass to that 1970 ceremony.
“I never got dressed up. I never got to pick up the award,” she tells me, her bare feet propped up on a coffee table as she stretches her arms over her head. “I regret it. It’s something that I look back on now and think, ‘It would have been so great to be able to have done that.’”
The world she grew up in was also a very different one from the crime-plagued modern world. Speaking on it, she said “I had an idyllic childhood. We never locked the door. We had our summers where we made forts out in the yard and played canasta on the porch and badminton in the driveway. In the winter, when it would snow, the police department would build us a fire and we’d go sledding. And then we’d come in and get warm by the fire, and Mommy would make chocolate chip cookies. My mom worked. My sister was almost eight years older than me, so I was 11 when she moved out. I was like an only child, in many ways. But we had dinner every night at 6 o’clock.”
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