Kate Hudson’s Penny Lane made Almost Famous feel like a love letter to the people who live for music.
More than two decades later, music has become central to Hudson’s own work. She released her debut album Glorious, earned a second Oscar nomination for Song Sung Blue and returned to television comedy in Running Point.
As of November 2026, she is also expanding into television directing. Her career has moved through romantic comedies, business ventures and ensemble films into a period where singing, acting and creative control increasingly overlap.
Almost Famous introduced much more than a famous surname
Hudson’s performance in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous made Penny Lane one of the defining characters of her early career.
The 2000 film gave her a role built around charisma and vulnerability. Penny seems to belong completely to the world of touring musicians, yet the story gradually reveals the distance between that appearance and what she actually receives from them.
Hudson earned a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for the performance. Her Golden Globes career record traces the breakthrough and the films that followed.
The ensemble also included Frances McDormand, whose protective mother offered a sharply different perspective on the tour’s apparent freedom.
For Hudson, the film established both star presence and emotional range. It also created a lasting association with music long before she released songs under her own name.
Romantic comedies became one chapter of a varied career
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days paired Hudson with Matthew McConaughey in 2003 and became one of her signature films.
More romantic comedies followed, including Fool’s Gold and Bride Wars. Other projects took her toward different genres, from The Skeleton Key to Deepwater Horizon and Marshall. Those credits are also documented in her Golden Globes profile.
In 2022, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery gave her a particularly flamboyant comic character: Birdie Jay, a former model and fashion entrepreneur whose confidence repeatedly outruns her judgment.
Rian Johnson’s mystery placed her among an ensemble led by Daniel Craig. Netflix’s cast guide identifies the characters and performers.
Birdie allowed Hudson to turn glamour into part of the joke. The character’s polished appearance makes her thoughtlessness more conspicuous, giving Hudson opportunities for a broader kind of comedy than a conventional romantic lead.
Photo: GabboT / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Fabletics widened her working life beyond films
Hudson also spent years building a business identity alongside her screen career.
She co-founded Fabletics in 2013, helping launch an activewear brand that made her a familiar presence outside film promotion. The company’s original launch announcement described her involvement from the beginning.
In December 2021, Fabletics announced her transition from its principal public face to an advisory role. That change was described as planned in the company’s statement.
Those dates help put the different phases of her career in order. The business was a substantial commitment during years when she was also acting, and her relationship with it evolved rather than remaining fixed.
Her more recent screen and music projects therefore followed a period in which her public identity had broadened considerably.
Glorious finally put her own voice at the center
Hudson released Glorious on May 17, 2024. The 12-track album turned a longstanding interest into a finished collection of her own music, as Apple Music’s release listing confirms.
Working with Linda Perry helped move that ambition forward. In an interview with the Recording Academy, Hudson described overcoming her reluctance to put herself in front of an audience as a singer.
“It’s my happy place, singing and writing,” she said.
The distinction between singing in a film and releasing an album matters. An acting role provides a character through whom to perform; an album asks listeners to respond more directly to the artist’s voice and choices.
Hudson had previously sung in Nine, but Glorious offered a larger introduction to her as a recording artist. Its arrival also made her next major film role feel connected to a creative interest that was now public.
Song Sung Blue brought a second Oscar nomination
In Song Sung Blue, Hudson played Claire Sardina opposite Hugh Jackman as Mike Sardina.
Craig Brewer’s film dramatized the lives of the musicians behind Neil Diamond tribute act Lightning and Thunder. It drew on Greg Kohs’s 2008 documentary, with music and the couple’s relationship forming the center of the story.
In a Focus Features interview, Brewer explained that adapting the documentary required compressing a much longer period of their lives into the feature’s narrative.
The role brought Hudson a leading-actress nomination at the 2026 Academy Awards. Jessie Buckley won for Hamnet, but Hudson’s nomination marked a significant return to Oscar recognition after Almost Famous.
Both films connect her to people whose lives are shaped by music. This time, she was playing someone performing it, with the relationship’s practical and emotional pressures sharing the stage.
Photo: Kevin Paul / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
Running Point is taking her into television directing
Hudson’s current television role is Isla Gordon in Running Point, the comedy about an underestimated woman taking charge of her family’s professional basketball team.
Season two arrived in April 2026, continuing Isla’s struggle to manage the LA Waves while navigating family interference and professional challenges. Netflix’s season-two guide confirms that the season is available and that a third was commissioned.
The next season adds another responsibility for Hudson. On October 19, Netflix announced that production had begun and that she would make her television directing debut with its first episode.
Writer and executive producer Mindy Kaling is also joining the cast. The official production update said no release date had been announced.
Hudson’s latest work makes the direction of her career unusually clear. She is still using the comic energy that helped make her famous, while giving more room to the musical and creative ambitions that have accompanied it for years.