“I’m not happy with my production!” Kate Hudson talks about taking risks and refusing to compromise — and finding her voice in 46| Kate Hudson

The first voice I hear when I enter the hotel room to meet Kate Hudson is that of her 21-year-old son, Ryder, speaking from the end of the phone: “I love you, mom!”

Isn’t it? You don’t have to be related to Hudson to consider it a happy offering — she’s a great performer who hasn’t made a great movie yet. It was a quarter-century ago in Almost Famous, where she first proved that she could lift a film out of the doldrums while making the task seem as easy as drying her hair. If it weren’t for her performance as Penny Lane, a rock ‘n’ roll muse who describes herself as an “ambulance band” rather than a member of a group, Cameron Crowe’s stupid 1970s valentine in his youth would have been almost unforgettable.

Her verve was the impetus behind this film, and it was her face alone that drove its marketing campaign, so it was fitting that Hudson, who was only 21 years old, should receive an Oscar nomination. The years that followed brought a wave of romantic comedies, including How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Bride Wars, both of which were smash hits despite their bittersweet mood. There were overlooked dramatic adventures (The Killer Inside Me, The Reluctant Fundamentalist), critical flops (the cancer-crying A Little Bit of Heaven, Sia’s blunt autism drama music) and bizarre comebacks, including Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, in which Hudson was great as a dim-witted fashion designer prone to facepalm moments.

Now 46, she just received a Golden Globe nomination and likely has another Oscar nomination on the way. Once again, it’s a film steeped in music: Song Sung Blue, a true underdog love story inspired by the 2008 documentary of the same name. Hudson is Claire Sardina, aka Thunder, who forms a Neil Diamond tribute outfit with her husband Mike (Hugh Jackman), the Lightning part of the duo. The opening half, in which Claire meets Mike and their collaboration turns from musical to romantic, is delightfully strange. The rest contains more dramatic transformations from a country burdened with doom and Western standards. Through it all, Hudson is a beacon of resilience, humanity, and compassion.

Dressed all in black today, with sleek, shiny blonde hair, she feels relaxed, if easily distracted. “Should I eat this if it’s already open?” she wondered out loud, examining the bag that came with the tea. “Do you think someone did something to this?” She puts the contents into the cup in the same way. “The interview ended with me on the floor …”

Hudson is also keeping an eye on what she and her son will do later this evening. “We’re going to see Radiohead. I’m so excited!” The last time she saw them live, she was Ryder’s age: it was October 2000, Almost Famous had just opened in the US, and the Oxfordshire pioneers were the musical guests on Saturday Night Live, which she was hosting. Hudson took off her clothes to reveal the phrase “Radiohead is here” painted on her bikini-clad body along with flowers and peace symbols. To the sound of gorgeous music, she frantically sways and sways as the camera zooms in and out at high speed.

The entire scene was a reference to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, the late-’60s sketch comedy show that made a star out of her mother, Goldie Hawn, who was usually seen prancing around in swimsuits and body paint. That moment on SNL was also an early acknowledgment, as if anything was needed, that Hudson would have her work cut out to try to escape her mother’s shadow.

Mortar has an unseen presence in this London hotel room. It’s her 80th birthday, and Hudson is skipping the celebrations back home in favor of promoting Song Sung Blue. At least she can feel a symbolic closeness to her mother by being in the city where it all began. “It’s so wonderful that I was born in London,” she says, ignoring the teatime rain dripping on the window. The conception occurred in Regent’s Park, about a mile from where we are sitting. “no in The actual garden. This could have been a cooler story. It was in an apartment my mother was renting. I bet she’ll remember which one.

Her parents – Hawn, who was married to musician Bill Hudson – divorced when she was 18 months old and her brother Oliver was four. Their stepfather, actor Kurt Russell, whom their mother has been with for more than 40 years, is the man they call “Pa.” When asked last year about her relationship with her biological father, who criticized her as “spoiled” in his memoirs but was largely absent from her life, Hudson said: “I don’t really have one.” She then amended her statement: “It’s a warm-up.”

Music has been a connective tissue throughout her life and work. Bill Hudson was a member of the Hudson Brothers, who spent most of the 1970s as teen idols signed to Elton John’s record label. Hawn released a country album, Goldie, in 1972. All three of Hudson’s children have musical fathers: Ryder’s father, and Hudson’s first and to date only husband, is Black Crowes singer, Chris Robinson; She has her second son Bingham, 14, with Matt Bellamy from Mews; Her current fiancé, former Los Angeles band frontman Danny Fujikawa, is the father of her seven-year-old daughter, Rani.

Hudson has sung on screen many times before, including a raucous duet with Matthew McConaughey of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Cocky” in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and a stunning sequence in Nine in which she radiates Italian cinema as she struts up and down the catwalk in silver shoes. “Why hasn’t a Kate Hudson musical been written?” one YouTube commenter demanded, implausibly.

Song Song Blue is different. All of Neil Diamond’s numbers are wrapped up in Hudson’s performance: she sings with character, expressing Sardina’s pain, longing and indefatigability through music. “In the studio, I would find these harmonies myself and create my own vocal notes,” she says proudly. Director Craig Brewer encouraged her. “I’ll say: ‘But Craig, is she really Claire?'” This show probably wouldn’t have been possible if she had modeled herself so closely on the real Sardina, whom she only met when filming was underway. “By that point, my version of Claire was in my body. But it was nice to have her there to ask me, “Did this thing happen? truly Happens like this?

Hudson’s singing in the film has a more authentic flair than anything heard on her debut rental album, Glorious, released last year. While promoting the album on American television, she caught the attention of Hugh Jackman. “Hugh saw me being interviewed, where I was talking about how simple I was king “Singing and writing the music, and he was like: ‘Well, obviously it needs to be Claire.'” You can see his point. It’s the desire to perform that sustains Sardina as fate delivers one stunning blow after another. “I understand what it means to love something so much that you can’t face losing it,” Hudson says.

You may not have recorded Glorious in the first place if it weren’t for Paul McCartney. “It was Paul’s 80th birthday and I was sitting on the side of the stage watching him headline Glastonbury.” The story ends in an epiphany. “I woke up the next morning and felt very emotional. I was like, ‘I am, too.’ no Happy with my output! I mean, I have so much gratitude. But I’m not just an actor. I’ve been a musician my whole life and never had the courage to do anything with it. I decided I wanted to take more chances. I want to fail more.” Perhaps you won’t be too hurt, then, that the Times called Glorious “the quintessence of a vanity project.”

Watching McCartney made her think “about those who compromise and those who don’t. I thought about being a woman in the industry and all the compromises you make for other people. About doing comedy and being successful at it but still feeling like you always have to compromise.”

Not that she’s opposed to romantic comedies. “You know what? It’s my favorite. I love it and I’ll never stop making it. I just think it needs to be better. When you’re trying to make a great movie, you’re fighting a lot of algorithms. I think they dropped the romantic comedy. The People I Loved was written and directed by the best talent. Nora Ephron, Jim [James L] Brooks: These are the great ones that last forever. “They’re like comfort blankets.”

Other movies are like hair shirts. Take The Killer Inside Me, a necessarily disgusting adaptation of Jim Thompson’s noir about a psychotic sheriff’s deputy, played by Hudson’s old friend Casey Affleck. It was Affleck and the film’s British director, Michael Winterbottom, who convinced her to take on the role of the killer’s fiancée, who is shown being beaten. In fact, as she confirmed in 2010: “There were a couple [of slaps] That’s when I thought: Oh my God, Casey! He’s got a little power behind it. Before killing her, he spat on her and punched her in the stomach. It is a controversial film but it is not the work of any compromise.

“It stretched different muscles,” she says now. “I didn’t get into acting to do just one thing.” Affleck hinted at the time that his then-wife wasn’t a fan of the film. What feedback has Hudson received? “Oh, it was good. It was a little movie.” This means that presumably no one saw it anyway. I told her I liked it, but I never wanted to watch it again. “That’s how I felt,” she says.

She claims that she does not pay attention to what is said about her, whether good or evil. “It all falls into the category of what Kurt calls ‘noise.’ His goal is always: Just do a great job.” Presumably, this applies to all Oscar talk, too. “this Nice – good “There’s no noise,” she admits. I ask her how often she checks Variety’s regularly updated Oscars predictions. Should I show it to her on my phone? “No, don’t!” She screams in horror. “It scares me. I can’t even.” I refrain from telling her that Jessie Buckley is the current favorite to win the award for Hamnet. While Buckley’s performance as Shakespeare’s wife, grieving the death of their young son, is studied and self-aware, Hudson’s work in Song Blue has an unobtrusive flexibility. It feels like life, rather than acting.

Nominated or not, she has a lot to keep her busy, including Sibling Revelry, the family dynamic podcast she co-hosts with her brother Oliver. Guests ranged from the A-list (Michelle Obama and the occasional Kardashian) to professionals, such as “psychic medium” John Edward. He naively plunged into two two-hour episodes, egged on by Hawn, who is no stranger to psychics; and Oliver, the talkative actor who claims to consult an oracle before choosing to accept a role. Let’s just say this doesn’t reflect well on the priests.

Hudson is not that attractive. “Psychic readings are fun,” she says. “But I treat them with caution.” In a recent episode, the siblings were diagnosed with ADHD on live air by a doctor who wasn’t quite sure who he was talking to; At one point, he mistakes Oliver for Hudson’s partner. Was it an official diagnosis? “Oh yeah, it was real.” She says she found it “validating. I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out how to organize my life, and now I feel like I have the tools to do so.” She distinguishes their diagnosis from what she calls the general ADHD world: “The kind that’s caused by phones. What we have is the real deal.”

Her next goal for the podcast is to audition more directors. She turns the tables on me and asks me: “What type of interviews do you like best? Who is your favorite?” Then a comical flutter of eyelashes. “Apart from me, obviously.” But the experience of interviewing Hudson was over before it began. Time’s up, and Radiohead are waiting. As for her career: Here’s hoping for more foreshadowing and more surprises, please.

Song Sung Blue is in UK cinemas from 1 January