Oliver Hudson’s relationship with his stepdad Kurt Russell — or Pa, as Hudson calls him — is like no other.
“He made me the man that I am, 100 percent,” Hudson, 59, said during the first-ever episode of Us Weekly’s Just Like Us video series. “I find that I am doing the same thing with my kids.”
Hudson and wife Erinn Bartlett share sons Wilder, 18, and Bodhi, 15, plus daughter Rio, 12. There is a little bit of “tough love” in their household — only “when it’s needed,” Hudson says — which comes from growing up with Russell and mom Goldie Hawn.
“It’s funny because, obviously, Kurt’s not my blood father, but I have a lot of his mannerisms, the way that I get angry, the way that I get excited,” Hudson said. “He’s just got so much life force in him. When he loves, he loves hard. When he laughs, he laughs hard.”
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Hudson continued, “I take that a lot — I’m weirdly getting emotional — his life force. When I get big, I find my inflections, the way that I speak, very similar to him.”
Hawn kicked off her relationship with Russell in 1983, years after she separated from ex-husband Bill Hudson. Following their divorce, Bill was estranged from son Oliver and daughter Kate Hudson and Russell stepped in as their father figure.
“[He] took me from a little scared boy who was a mama’s boy, and taught me how to be alone,” Oliver said of Russell. “Taught me independence, the freedom of sort of being able to find your way and not have to rely on people.”
Not a shock, however, that some aspects of growing up in a famous family were difficult.
“Look, it’s always a little rough as a boy when your mom is funny and sexy and hot and all those things,” he said. “There was some of that, but it was never egregious. It never put me down in any way.”
There was one memorable “instance” Oliver had during his youth that involved Russell.
“I played hockey for eight years, and it was my own teammate. We were playing and we were doing pictures. Picture day is like 4 a.m. on a Saturday. You’re exhausted,” Oliver recalled, explaining that his “idiot teammate” made a NSFW comment about Russell.
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“We had our helmets off, and he said something that I can’t even say here,” he continued. “I just lost it. Gloves off, just hauled into him. Just got on the ice and started fighting him.”
Even as Oliver got older and started to kick off his own acting career, Russell was there as a support system.
“When I was 24 years old, Kurt came up to me. I just started acting — I was late to the game — and he goes, ‘You’re a good actor. … Here’s my advice to you, you have to stop giving a s***’ And it makes so much sense,” Oliver said, “It’s hard to truly not give a s*** unless that is who you are, and that is innately who Kurt is.”
For more from Oliver’s Just Like Us interview, watch the video above or check out the full episode, here.
