Kate Hudson was born in Los Angeles to parents, Bill Hudson, the famous singer, comedian and member of the Hudson brothers, and to Goldie Hawn, the Academy Award winning actress. In respect of ancestry, definitely she is the product of a blend! While her maternal grandmother is of Hungarian Ashkenazi Jewish descent, her paternal grandfather was of the Italian descent. It is also to be noted, that her paternal grandfather's ancestry traces to 15 th century England. For this Kate Hudson was raised in the atmosphere of Jewish religion, though her family also used to practice Buddhism. However, in her childhood she faced a troublseome life like many others. Just like many others her parents were divorced eighteen months after her birth and she along with her brother Oliver Hudson, were raised by their mother and their mother's long time boyfriend, actor Kurt Russell. In the later part of her life Kate Hudson has recognised Kurt Russell as her real father, instead of the biological one! On the other hand Kate Hudson has described her mother as "the woman that I've learned the most from, and who I look up to, who has conducted her life in a way that I can look up to". But her troubled infancy hardly had any impact on her later life, thanks to both Kurt and Goldie. This is most evident from her educational career, as she graduated from Crossroads, a performing school in Santa Monica in 1997. In the later stage she was accepted to the New York University, but preferred to select an acting career instead of attending. The breakthrough role of Kate Hudson came in the role of Penny Lane in Almost Famous of Cameron Crowe in the year 2000. It is for this movie for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. But this was certainly not her first appearance. Even before this she appeared in the lesser-known films like Gossip, a teenage drama, and 200 Cigarettes, which was a New Year's set comedy and with a large cast of actors. In this respect it can be said, that regarding her early career and success, Kate Hudson on herself has noted that she is a "hard worker", and did not want to be associated with her well-known parents, wishing to avoid the perception that she "rode on somebody's coattails". Perhaps this attitude was responsible for her to turn down the characterization of Mary Jane Watson in the 2002 film version of Spide Man, and in that place made her mind to act in the remake of the historical romance The Four Feathers, though this film was not well received by critics or audiences. But her next film How to Lose a Guy in 10 Day, a trenchant romantic comedy, appeared to be a big success at the box office. It is learnt that the film grossed over $100 million after its February 2003 release. In the following days Kate Hudson also appeared in several romantic comedies, that included Alex and Emma and Raising Helen. Both the films were found to meet varying degrees of success.

In the year 2007 Kate Hudson directed the short film Cutlass, one of Glamour magazine's "Reel Moments", which was on the basis of readers' personal essays. The film Cutlass casted actors like Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, Virginia Madsen, Chevy Chase and Kristen Stewart.