Depression Marred Goldie's Early Years

Hollywood's favourite upbeat funnygirl, Goldie Hawn, has revealed the smiles she's famous for were just a front for severe depression that marred her early career.

In her upcoming autobiography A LOTUS IN THE MUD, the Private Benjamin star, who became famous as a giggling regular on comedy show ROWAN + MARTIN's LAUGH-IN, explains she was miserable while making her big break in Hollywood.

She says, "During that period I went into a period of depression, a fear and anxiety and non-specific anxiety attacks... I lost my smile. I had to force it."

Hawn reveals her depression was at its worst when she film CACTUS FLOWER with Ingrid Bergman and Walter Matthau in the late 1960s, and started a nine-year-long stint of psychoanalysis.

She puts it down to the fact she was desperately homesick for family and friends in Washington.

She adds, "I was afraid. I left everything I knew, I left every friend that I had made, I was away from my family. I was in Los Angeles, California.

"I'm a family girl... I just lost it."