Goldie Hawn

Hawn was born in Washington, D.C. to Laura (née Steinhoff), a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn, a musician and conductor who was a descendent of Edward Rutledge, the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence. She was named after her mother's aunt. She has one sister, entertainment publicist Patti Hawn; their brother, Edward Jr., died in infancy before Patti was conceived. The girls were unaware of their deceased brother's existence growing up.

Her father was a Presbyterian of German and English descent. Her mother was Jewish, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Hawn was raised Jewish in Takoma Park, Maryland, and attended Montgomery Blair High School in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland.

Hawn began taking ballet and tap dance lessons at the age of three and danced in the corps de ballet of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo production of The Nutcracker in 1955. She made her stage debut in 1964, playing Juliet in a Virginia Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet.

In 1964, Hawn ran and taught in a ballet school, having dropped out of American University where she was majoring in drama. She made her professional dancing debut in a production of Can-Can at the Texas Pavilion of the New York World's Fair. She began working as a professional dancer a year later and appeared as a go-go dancer in New York City and at the Peppermint Box in New Jersey.