Why You Rarely Catch Kurt Russell And Goldie Hawn Working Together These Days

Given that Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn have been a couple for more than 40 impressive years, it's easy to assume they have starred in a bunch of movies together. But that assumption would be wrong. Hawn and Russell have co-starred in only five films. Among those is the 1968 musical "The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band" (1968), which they filmed years before they properly met — and due to their age gap, Hawn was 21 and Russell was 16. Their lack of collaborations wasn't by design, though. After Hawn and Russell got together on the set of "Swing Shift" in 1983 and co-starred in 1987's "Overboard," their careers went in different directions.

Between "Overboard" and their next movies, the Netflix holiday flicks "The Christmas Chronicles" (2018), in which Hawn made a quick cameo, and "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two" (2020), the couple went 31 years without being co-stars. "Really, it's about the material, and it just didn't come along," Hawn told The New York Times in 2020. Russell admitted that it surprised him, though he said it makes sense in hindsight. "I thought we'd work together much sooner than this, but Goldie and I are pretty choosy. And generally, Goldie Hawn movies and movies that Kurt Russell is in are pretty different things," Russell added.

It really is down to the type of projects they generally take on, because they truly enjoy working together. "We're workers, and he really gets on that set and knows what works, what doesn't, and we're on time and we literally work together ... like a nice symphony," she said on "Good Morning America" in 2024. So when they got together for "The Christmas Chronicles" franchise, they made the best of it.

When the opportunity to share the screen in "The Christmas Chronicles" came along, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell jumped at the chance and enjoyed it. "But what it was, was actually a great break from everyday life and a new way of being together, which was great," Hawn told Fox News in 2020. "[I] considered it almost like a honeymoon, to tell you the truth, and working together was really fun," she added. 

However, Hawn joked that working with a partner requires some internal work, too. "First of all, you have to forget everything that bugs you about your husband," she teased in a Netflix promo video, causing Russell to laugh (though the duo aren't officially husband and wife). Russell, who was the lead in the first movie whereas Hawn made just a brief appearance, was excited to see his wife bring Mrs. Claus to life for the sequel. "And we've got Goldie Hawn as Mrs. Claus. Guess what? We're gonna have some fun," he said.

Hawn had a ball falling in love with Russell all over again, this time in a Santa Claus costume. She would sometimes even forget to deliver her lines from the hard gazing she was doing at her man. "People were going, 'Goldie?' I was behind the camera, 'Oh, I'm sorry! I, I ... ' I got absorbed in your beard or something," she laughed, giving insight into the spicy secret to Hawn and Russell's decades-long romance.