Kate Hudson's Romantic History: The Life-Changing Loves, the Fun Flings and the Fantastical Headlines

Kate Hudson loves herself some love.

The soon-to-be mother of three is nuts about her kids; adores her mom, stepdad and brother; keeps herself in tip-top shape and throws herself into her work with abandon, be it acting or her Fabletics fitness line and healthy-living projects. That’s a lot of love.

In fact, it’s so much that, even when Hudson has fallen in love with a significant other, it’s not always easy to carve out the space needed to make a relationship work.

“Relationships are the most challenging things,” she told Self in early 2014. “It’s where you do the most work in your life. You come face-to-face with yourself, and if you can deal with realizing we’re all flawed, accept it and work with it, you might have a really amazing, lasting relationship.” The Almost Famous star, by then a mother of two and at the time engaged to Muse frontman Matthew Bellamy, added, “If I look at my parents, who’ve been together 30-something years, I’d say no matter what they’ve been through, they share similar values and really like each other. It sounds easy, but it’s not.”

Once upon a time, it at least felt easier.

On the verge of becoming the biggest breakout star in Hollywood with the release of Almost Famous, the 21-year-old moved in with Black Crows singer Chris Robinson, days after they met at a party in May 2000. They tied the knot that New Year’s Eve, making for a lot of giddy looks and red carpet dates as Hudson became the toast of awards season, and she enthusiastically envisioned spending the rest of her life with him.

“For us, we will never think of not being with each other. I’m done. I am happy. I can’t wait to grow old. I can’t wait to retire,” she told London’s Independent newspaper in 2003. The Golden Globe winner had taken a year off from work and was back doing press for The Four Feathers.

During her time away from Hollywood, “I learned how much I love providing for my husband—something I will always cherish, even when I’m working,” she said. “I love being able to be a wife, make dinners and invite friends over and be able to make it all nice for him. It’s a nice thing for a man to feel that, and for me to feel that I can give that.”

Theirs was a passionate relationship, with Hudson also explaining to People that year, “In the beginning we were so volatile. We were so in love and passionate, and then we would just hate each other and throw stuff around, and then we would travel to Paris for a week.”

They welcomed son Ryder on Jan. 7, 2004. Hudson said, about becoming parents, “I think it’s the best we’ve ever felt being together.”

But there was no magical glue that could hold the couple together. They separated in August 2006 and Robinson filed for divorce that November. Whatever sticking points made staying together impossible, they’ve since had an almost-drama-free divorce, the actress and the rock star putting Ryder’s needs ahead of any lingering bad blood.

“Chris and I divorced for the right reasons—we just didn’t work. But we remain extremely close,” Hudson told the Daily Mail in 2008, having just played one half of an estranged couple that reconnects during a zany treasure hunt in Fool’s Gold. “The reasons are personal [as to why it didn’t work], but those things weren’t difficult. They can be, but dealing with work schedules is always a challenge. I think that’s true for everybody.”

And that’s one of the reasons why actors so often find love—be it lasting or temporary—on the job.

The short time that lapsed between Hudson’s marital separation and the start of her on-and-off relationship with Owen Wilson, her co-star in 2006’s Me, You and Dupree, prompted many assumptions that he had something to do with the end of her marriage—speculation that was adamantly denied by Wilson’s camp. (In 2009, Hudson said flatly, regarding rumors of infidelity, “That’s not what happened.”)

During a tumultuous time for both of them, the actors broke up and rekindled several times between when they started dating in September 2006 and their ultimate split in 2009, though people close to them would always categorize their relationship as friendly in between romances.

They first split in 2007, after which Hudson briefly dated Dax Shepard. They called it quits that October when Hudson “got bored,” a source told the New York Daily News, but it was a “clean break.”

Hudson was back with Wilson by February 2008, but when they broke up for the second time that May 2008, a friend of Wilson’s told People, “It was a pretty bad breakup. Owen said it was a tough one. He definitely doesn’t want to dwell on it. He wants to put it behind him.”

Instead, the following February they were reportedly back on after Hudson briefly dated Lance Armstrong, though their time spent together might have been in a friendlier capacity. Wilson had weathered some intense personal challenges, including a trip to the hospital for what the police report called a suicide attempt in 2007, and he has always been one to keep as tight a lid as possible on his personal life. When the interviewer asked—not about specifics, but just about the increased interest in his personal life in general—during a joint interview with Jennifer Aniston when they did Marley & Me in 2008, he reportedly got up and walked out (he did return to finish the interview).

Wilson’s outlook on life brightened considerably when he became a father in 2011. The following year he and Hudson “hugged and kissed on both cheeks” in greeting each other at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, according to Us Weekly, and then they whipped out their phones and showed off pictures of their kids.

After they had parted ways for good back in 2009, however, Hudson turned her attention to baseball while dating Yankees super-star Alex Rodriguez, who was recently divorced. Splitting her time between L.A. and New York, Hudson became a much-photographed presence in the stands.

But having lived a little since the days when she so publicly gushed about Robinson, and after becoming close to a guy like Wilson who was understandably wary of the press, Hudson didn’t want to say too much about her latest attention-grabber of a romance.

“I’m not pregnant,” she laughed off one of the usual rumors du jour to Harper’s Bazaar toward the end of 2009. “I can’t go two months without being pregnant, engaged, or breaking up because I’m too needy, which is always the one they love. I’m not needy. You kind of have to laugh it off, but it can kind of screw up other things around it.”

She continued, “I have a child, and there are people involved, and it’s unfair to talk about somebody else, especially when you’re not in that place yet to be discussing those things. If I was sitting here with a belly out to here, I’d be talking about what the relationship is and how important that is in my life right now.”

Hudson objected to the idea that a picture of her and Rodriguez sharing a kiss, let alone photos of them just hanging out, was much proof of anything anyway.

“I quickly kissed the cheek,” she insisted. “And I remember one of the headlines the next day said, ‘MAKEOUT SESSION.’ What is wrong with people? If I walk out on the street with any man, I’m dating him. I’ve been dating two of my best friends from high school who are like girls to me. I’m not going to hide going to breakfast.”

She also wasn’t in any rush to settle down.

Single motherhood “can be okay,” she told the magazine. “I feel like I’ve learned so much. The routine [of marriage] can kill me. That becomes a difficult balance, too, because I feel like my son needs his routine, but for me I need to step out of my routine. I haven’t figured it all out yet.”

Hudson’s hard-fought wisdom proved prescient. Shortly after the Harper’s Bazaar interview was published came the reports that she and Rodriguez had split up.

Days beforehand on the Late Show With David Letterman, Hudson had called him a friend. “Nice guy,” she told Dave.

But perhaps the promise of never-ending headlines (including the inevitable ones about a curse should A-Rod find himself in a slump) may have proved a deal-breaker. “Kate decided to end it before things got too messy,” a source told the Daily Mail after they went their separate ways.

Coincidentally, both Rodriguez and Armstrong would be caught red-handed in doping scandals, resulting in the baseball player being suspended for the entire 2014 season and the cyclist being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, his endorsements, his dignity, etc.

“Lance and Alex are phenomenal athletes who have made some bad choices and let a lot of people down,” Hudson reflected to InStyle in 2014. “It’s a decision they made for themselves and they’ve got to loathe it.”

The actress said, “I personally think that you make the choices you make and you should reap the consequences. People have a right to [feel betrayed].”

Yet even though she’s struck out a few times, just like most people, Hudson, while being frank about the challenges of relationships, has maintained a sunny attitude about men and enjoying herself her in the meantime.

“I love boys,” she told Elle UK in 2009. “I believe they’re really simple. Every guy likes to say that they’re complicated, but they’re so easy to figure out. What did that Dr. Laura say? Something like, ‘All men want is sex and for you to make them a sandwich.’ I thought that was really funny—and not entirely untrue.”

Hudson started making sandwiches for Matt Bellamy in 2010, they got engaged in April 2011 and welcomed son Bingham on July 9, 2011.

They jetted around between L.A., New York and Bellamy’s native England and made for a quietly happy family, and the couple felt no need to rush to the altar. “We have to find time to have time together alone,” Hudson said on The View in 2014. “I think if we do get married, it will be for the kids actually. We’re really happy. I know it’s not a golden ticket, but there’s something secure about marriage.”

But it wasn’t long after Hudson referred to relationships as “challenging” in her Self interview that the pair decided to split up.

“Relationships ending are painful, and you can choose to carry that or you can choose to reframe it. If Matt and I had a great relationship, we would still be together, but we chose to move on because we had different visions of how we wanted to live our lives,” Hudson said in the November 2015 issue of Allure. “That doesn’t mean, though, that we can’t rebuild something that would be the best thing for the kids.”

Similar to what she and Robinson managed to do with Ryder, Hudson and Bellamy immediately segued into co-parenting.

“We said, ‘We need to try to create something for the kids where they feel like they’re gaining something rather than losing something,'” Hudson recalled. “It’s been a seamless transition. Kids just want to see their parents be cool. Everybody’s cool; everybody’s good.”

They also been spotted together with Bingham and Ryder on numerous occasions since, sometimes with Bellamy’s now-fiancée Elle Evans.

Hudson reflected to Red magazine in 2016, “I do believe that it is better to have two people as parents that are truly happy in themselves for [the sake of] their children. If they can’t sustain that at home and if it’s affecting their family, then they have to look at their relationship.

“Of course, the goal is always to stay together. Matt and I really worked on it together and we came to the point where we realized that we are really better as friends and that is a healthier approach for our kids. And we can see the results.”

After her breakup with Bellamy, however, Hudson did refrain from getting seriously involved with anyone for a good while and seemed to be having a great time being single.

She spent some time with Derek Hough and enjoyed a rumored fling with Nick Jonas, though once again Hudson insisted that photos were often worth a lot less than 1,000 words.

“The media scrutinizes all single women in the public eye,” she told Red. “You cannot have a conversation with a man without being attached to them. One: can women not be friends with men? Two: are they implying that a single woman is constantly looking to be in a relationship or is in need of a man? You don’t get that with men.”

But you could see why she and Jonas would be friends (who exchange light kisses at dinner) then, as both seemed to be big proponents of enjoying the moment.

Jonas called Hudson “incredible,” telling Complex in 2016 that he was “very much single” but adding, “We had an unbelievable connection as two humans who just admire things about each other, and see something in each other that’s beautiful.” Not wanting to say too much, Jonas concluded, “We did have a beautiful connection. Even now I have so much admiration and respect. She’s amazing.”

And simply irresistible, both in person and as headline fodder.

In early 2017 Hudson was rumored to be dating Brad Pitt, the star getting sucked into another person’s post-split headlines for a change, but we were told that Pitt was barely dating at the time and there was no truth to the litany of stories pouring out about his newly single life.

As it turned out, Hudson had found love with musician Danny Fujikawa, guitarist for the band Chief and stepbrother of her longtime dear friends Erin and Sara Foster. They had their first under-the-radar date, a friendly hike, in December 2016—more than 13 years after first meeting.

“No moves were made on this first date,” Hudson later revealed. “In fact, it took months for him to make a first move!”

“Kate’s a free spirit who has always been attracted to musicians,” a source told People about the new couple in March 2017. “But Danny also appeals to her because he is talented, bright and cosmopolitan like she is.”

At the time, however, the source didn’t consider their relationship too serious.

Fast-forward a year, and Hudson was dropping hints that it had gotten serious.

Asked in March by The Times in the U.K. if she thought about starting a family with Fujikawa, she said, “I’d like to! I’m not done yet. A girl would be fun. We’ll see. We’ll see how many Danny wants.”

What do you know, she was already pregnant, with a girl. Hudson shared the happy news today, writing on Instagram that she kept it private for as long as possible, but that her bump was about to start doing the talking for her.

She’d had a nausea-plagued first trimester, the giddy-again actress revealed, but she, Danny, Ryder and Bingham are “crazy excited!” Hudson even shared the gender reveal, where the whole family gathered in the yard holding black balloons festooned with question marks, which when popped let forth a stream of smaller pink balloons and confetti.

As always, the more love in Kate Hudson’s life, the merrier.