Goldie Hawn: Michael Eisner Says Beautiful Women Can’t Be Funny, Hawn Is the Exception

Goldie Hawn and Michael Eisner shared the stage Thursday at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Thursday, and the former Disney CEO said the actress is the “exception to the rule” that beautiful a...
Goldie Hawn: Michael Eisner Says Beautiful Women Can’t Be Funny, Hawn Is the Exception
Written by Pam Wright

Goldie Hawn and Michael Eisner shared the stage Thursday at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Thursday, and the former Disney CEO said the actress is the “exception to the rule” that beautiful and funny is not the norm in Hollywood.

“From my position, the hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman,” Eisner said to Goldie Hawn. “By far. They usually—boy am I going to get in trouble, I know this goes online—but usually, unbelievably beautiful women, you being an exception, are not funny.”

Hawn was drawn in and said she agreed that she may owe her sense of humor to her being an “ugly duckling” growing up.

“You didn’t think you were beautiful,” Eisner said. “I know women who have been told they’re beautiful, they win Miss Arkansas, they don’t ever have to get attention other than with their looks. So they don’t tell a joke. In the history of the motion-picture business, the number of beautiful, really beautiful women—a Lucille Ball—that are funny, is impossible to find.”

Goldie Hawn, who will turn 70 in November, told Eisner she left action because Hollywood offers fewer roles to women as they get older.

“When you get to a certain age, you have to make a decision for yourself,” Hawn said after an audience member asked about ageism in Hollywood. “If you want to get old in the industry and you want to play maybe a few parts that come along now and then—or what else in life interests you?”

Do you think Goldie Hawn is the exception to the rule that beautiful women can’t be funny?

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