Phases and Stages

The changes are amazing that we ALL go through in life................................



Jeanne Hawn was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Laura (née Steinhoff; November 27, 1913 – November 27, 1993), a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn (September 28, 1908 – June 7, 1982), a band musician who played at major events in Washington. She was named after her mother's aunt. She has one sister, Patricia; her brother, Edward, died as an infant before Jeanne's birth.

Her father was a Presbyterian, and of German and English descent, while her mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Hungary; Hawn had a Jewish upbringing. Hawn is often reported to be a direct descendant of Edward Rutledge, the youngest signatory of the Declaration of Independence; however, genealogical research has shown that Rutledge is not an ancestor of Hawn's. Hawn was raised in Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and attended Montgomery Blair High School in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland.
Jeanne Hawn began taking ballet and tap dance lessons at the age of three, and danced in the chorus of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of The Nutcracker in 1955. She made her stage debut in 1961, playing Juliet in a Virginia Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet. By 1964, she ran and taught in a ballet school, having dropped out of American University, where she was majoring in drama. In 1964, Hawn made her professional dancing debut in a production of Can-Can at the Texas Pavilion of the New York World's Fair. She began working as a professional dancer a year later, and appeared as a go-go dancer in New York City.