Kate Hudson found it “hard” to break away from rom-coms.
Kate Hudson is best known for her romantic comedies
The 46-year-old actress is best known for her work on feel-good films such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Bride Wars and Fool’s Gold, and though there is a lot she enjoys about making the movies, she believes they stopped directors considering her for grittier parts.
Speaking on stage at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the Hollywood Reporter reports she said: “It was clear that that’s where the industry liked to hire me and then my goal, my hope, was to make the best versions of those.
“In that time, it was also like there’s a lot of factors: you’ve got your team, you’ve got people saying, ‘We really think you should do this, these are great directors.’ And then you have moments where you’re also like, ‘That’s a lot of money and I’m a single mom.’
“[But] I was starting to be like, I really want to be doing something different. And I think when you become really famous doing that genre, it’s hard for certain filmmakers to see you in anything other than what we’re watching. These sort of things that like, ‘Well, transforming isn’t what she does’ when, in fact, it’s what I love to do.”
Kate believes a successful romantic comedy is far more difficult to get right than it may seem.
She said: “I think it’s one of the hardest genres to get right. [Rom-coms need to be approached] with the intention like everybody does a great film, not with the intention of making a rom-com.”
After landing her second Oscar nomination for her latest film Song Sung Blue, Kate hopes more opportunities will come her way to try new things.
She said: “It doesn’t mean to me that all of a sudden I just want to be doing this for the concept of the accolades; I want to do it to put people in the theatre too.
“This feels like the beginning of maybe that part where I get to do a little bit more transformations than maybe I’ve been able to do in the past.”
Kate received her first Oscar nomination for Almost Famous and she recalled receiving some words of wisdom from her stepfather Kurt Russell after the 2021 ceremony.
She said: “I lost, and everything happened so fast. My dad just turned to me — he was down a couple, and Kurt [Russell] just goes, ‘Congratulations, now you can go have a career.’
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ And that was Kurt’s way of saying, like, ‘Welcome, this is what it is. Everything happens and in a second it’s all over.’”