Goldie Hawn Explains Why She Took a 15-Year Break From Acting, and Why 'Snatched' Brought Her Back

Goldie Hawn has not appeared in movie since starring opposite Susan Sarandon in 2002’s The Banger Sisters. This May, however, the iconic 71-year-old actress will make her return the big screen in the R-rated action-comedy Snatched, playing a woman who reluctantly joins her ne’er-do-well daughter (Amy Schumer) for an ill-fated vacation to South America.

So why did Hawn (Private Benjamin, Wildcats) decide to make Snatched her comeback vehicle? “Amy. Content. Timing. And also the exciting aspect of the unknown,” the former Oscar nominee said when she and Schumer (who calls Hawn “my favorite of all time… you look at her and you just start laughing!”) sat down with Yahoo Movies at CinemaCon in Las Vegas Thursday. (Watch above.)

Asked why she took such a long break from acting that many fans assumed she had retired — Hawn turned reflective. “I guess there’s a time in everyone’s life where you look at [it] and say, ‘Are you going to do this for the rest of your life? Or are you going to grow and do something else for the rest of your life? What is this section going to look like?‘”

Hawn then hinted at the fact that the movie offers decreased: “Every woman hits a certain age, every woman has to face it, that’s the way it goes, and I really am not a sit-around-and-wait-for-the-phone-to-ring person.”

But it was ultimately the tragic events of 9/11 that inspired Hawn to do something else with her life. “I was really worried about where the world was going,” she said. So the actress created The Hawn Foundation & MindUP, an international educational organization for children that finds her working around the globe.

“It’s the most exciting thing I’ve done,” she said. “When you look at a life well-lived, I think that’s one of the parts.”

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