The Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) honored Academy Award nominee Kate Hudson with the 2026 Arlington Artist of the Year Award on Friday night, February 13, in a tribute that celebrated both her acclaimed new performance in Craig Brewer’s musical drama Song Sung Blue and a career spanning more than two decades. The award was presented by Gwyneth Paltrow, who called Hudson “kind of like a little sister to me.”
The evening spotlighted Hudson’s turn in Song Sung Blue, for which she has been nominated for Golden Globe and SAG Awards, and surveyed a filmography that includes Almost Famous, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Raising Helen, You, Me and Dupree, Nine, Deepwater Horizon, Marshall, and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
The conversation also touched on her music career—highlighted by her 2024 album Glorious—and her recent Netflix series Running Point. Hudson is only the second recipient of SBIFF’s Arlington Artist of the Year Award; Timothée Chalamet received the inaugural honor in 2025.
In a wide-ranging onstage discussion with The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, Hudson reflected on growing up with actor parents, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, who encouraged her to pursue singing and acting with purpose and hard work. She revisited her breakout in Almost Famous and her first Oscar nomination, recalling Russell’s advice after her loss at the 2001 Academy Awards: “Congratulations, now you can go have a career.” That message, she said, grounded her.
Hudson also spoke about her reign as a rom-com star with hits like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Bride Wars, Something Borrowed, and Fool’s Gold, and about seeking new challenges.
“I think it’s one of the hardest genres to get right,” she said, noting it should be approached “with the intention like everybody does a great film, not with the intention of making a rom-com.”
As she weighed opportunities while navigating industry expectations and single motherhood, she added, “I really want to be doing something different…. When you become really famous doing that genre, it’s hard for certain filmmakers to see you in anything other than what we’re watching. These sort of things that like, ‘Well, transforming isn’t what she does,’ when, in fact, it’s what I love to do.”
That impulse also fueled her move into music with Glorious. “It just weighed on me,” Hudson said. “And then finally COVID happened and I was like, I will just regret it if I don’t do it…. I did it, and then I couldn’t believe the reception. It was so warm and loving. And I was like, ‘Why didn’t I do this before?’”
Closing the night, Paltrow recounted the pair’s decades-long friendship—“marriages to musicians, plural,” expat years in London, kids who once played in a band together, and milestone birthdays.
After watching Song Sung Blue, Paltrow said she immediately FaceTimed Hudson and “burst into tears,” adding, “I was so proud of your skill and your brilliance, but because I felt you finally had a role that shows all of what you can do.”
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