Goldie Hawn And Kurt Russell Have A Bigger Age Gap Than We Realized

The love story of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell has had us kicking our feet for over four decades despite all Hollywood odds being against them. Although the couple has never tied the knot, their relationship is still so coveted that it is easy to glaze over their age gap. Though Hollywood standards would say otherwise, Hawn and Russell have a fairly noticeable age discrepancy of nearly six years — that's no contest to the generational differences between some celebrity couples like George and Amal Clooney or Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. But knowing how old they were when they met makes all the difference, even for Hawn.

Hawn was born on November 21, 1945, and Russell was born on March 17, 1951, giving them a five-and-a-half-year age difference. When they met on the 1966 set of the 1968 film "The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band," Hawn was 21, while Russell was only 16. Naturally, that's not where their romance blossomed. "I thought he was adorable, but he was much too young," the "Private Benjamin" star said on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" in 2012 (via the Daily Mail). Russell recalled in a 2023 Vanity Fair interview that he was smitten when he first laid eyes on Hawn during the film auditions. "I thought she was awfully attractive," he said. "You couldn't miss her. She just had this energy about her." But Russel was still just a teenager at the time.

It wasn't until 17 years later — when their age gap didn't feel so significant — that Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell reconnected on the set of the 1984 film "Swing Shift." The "Tombstone" actor recalled the wild impression he made on Hawn to Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest on "Live with Kelly & Ryan" in 2017. Russell said he was hungover from a late night of drinking with his father when he showed up to his audition with Hawn. "The first thing I remember I said was, 'Wow, you've got a great figure.'" Luckily for Russell, he said, "She realized the innocence of it ... and said, 'Thank you!'"

What really hit the mark for Hawn was Russell's ability to care for her children — she was a mom of two at the time. "When my children visited me on the set, I can't explain it, but he was the one for me," she revealed on the "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" podcast. She said her attraction to him wasn't purely based on his good looks. "It was because he matched my devotion to children to be number one."

Hawn and Russell later co-starred in 1987's "Overboard" and played opposite each other again in 2018's "The Christmas Chronicles" and the 2020 sequel. They have a blended family but share one adult son, Wyatt Russell. The stars are still going strong 40-plus years later. Their advice on romance? Sex! "You have to have good sex," Hawn told People in 2024. "But it's not just because of the act, it's because of the warmth and the intimacy that it creates." Despite their age difference, the couple seems to have had no problem keeping their relationship alive.