Goldie Hawn admits she ‘didn’t want to be famous’ at the start of her career

Actress Goldie Hawn appeared on Tuesday’s Good Morning Britain to chat about her work in teaching children mindfulness – and opened up about her own battle with depression as she rose to fame.

‘When I was young, I became depressed,’ the 75-year-old Hollywood star recalled. ‘I was 21, rising to success, it’s a very difficult thing. I didn’t necessarily want that.

‘In doing so, I was very depressed and I had a lot of these issues where I couldn’t even go outside in public. This is something that for me I worked through.

‘I went to a doctor, I went to a psychologist, I learned about quieting my mind and what happens to the brain, I studied the brain.

‘I didn’t understand why we weren’t taking it out and putting in our classrooms for our kids to learn and enjoy and to be able to have a much better sense of self-regulation.’

Goldie added: ‘Happiness is a choice. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to be a big deal. I wanted to go home… I wanted to be a dance school teacher. I did have a plan.

‘So I didn’t have delusions of grandeur on any level, I was extremely realistic. The problem was, I was a dancer. And then things changed.

‘For every one of us, we have a different reason for why we might feel low, depressed, anxious, a lot of these things… If I broke my arm I would go to a doctor, if I fell and hurt my hip I would go to a doctor. Doctors can help us and we should never be ashamed to say, ‘I’m feeling sad’.’

Goldie launched MindUp to help children learn mindfulness techniques and said: ‘The idea is we have our children start early.

‘I started the programme when 9/11 happened, just knowing there was going to be, basically things had changed forever and our children are going to have to adapt and there was going to be what they call silent distress. That was then. Children feel everything.’

She added: ‘Now, when this pandemic happened it gobsmacked everyone. We didn’t know how to handle our children, we’re dealing with ourselves – so many issues with parenting and how do I handle this. It’s a plethora of problems.’

Of whether she thinks the pandemic will have a bigger impact on mental health than what she saw 9/11 had on American children, she said: ‘Yes I do. They basically were incarcerated in their own homes. There was frustration, probably in some ways very stressed parenting. Children didn’t feel safe oftentimes, they couldn’t see their friends, social development for their neuro growth, it didn’t quite happen.

‘I don’t believe that the time period they went through [in the pandemic] is going to be a lasting damaging effect, I think we have to learn obviously how to deal with it. That period of time can be made up.’

She added: ‘What are we teaching them? What are they learning? Yes we need math, English, we need all of it, but the wellbeing and the sense of resiliency and wellbeing of our children is everything. They’re the ones that are going to have to deal with the rest of the world as they grow up.’ 

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