Kurt Russell says the move that took him and Goldie Hawn from California to Colorado in 1986 was never about disappearing from Hollywood. It was about building a life that fit their blended family better, and, eventually, about ranching.
The explanation landed in a People interview published May 31, giving fresh clarity to a decision that has shaped where the couple lived and where their children grew up. Russell, 75, said he and Hawn were looking for what Colorado had to offer and wanted a day-to-day routine that worked better for the family they were raising together.
That family included Wyatt Russell, Oliver Hudson, Kate Hudson and Boston Russell, and the setting mattered. Wyatt is now 39, while Oliver and Boston are 49 and 46, and Kate is 46. Russell said the children grew up with a good dose of what nature can offer, a very different upbringing from city life. The point was not just scenery. It was rhythm, space and a version of family life that made sense outside Los Angeles.
Russell and Hawn had been together since 1983, and a couple of years later they built a ranch in Colorado together. He said he wanted to get into ranching life eventually, and that he was more comfortable living there. The move, in his telling, was practical and personal at the same time: a family choice that also matched the life he wanted to grow into.
That is where the story gets interesting. Russell said many people treated the move like a farewell to his career, as if leaving California meant the end of his place in the industry. He pushed back on that idea. “I don't dislike L.A.,” he said. “I wasn't escaping. I was just living where I live.” He added that when he made the move, “nobody else was doing that,” and when others warned him, “Well, that's goodbye. That's it,” he replied, “Well, we'll see.”
Now, 42 years into his partnership with Hawn, the move looks less like a detour than a statement of how he wanted to live. Russell never framed Colorado as a retreat. He framed it as home, and the only open question is the one he left hanging all those years ago: the ranch life he wanted to enter then is the life he has been living since.
