“When I was 11 years old, people would come up to me and say, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And I said ‘happy.’ … And I kind of enjoyed my answer of ‘happy’ because I really believed it.”Goldie HawnOscar-winning actress

When Goldie Hawn takes the stage at the Kentucky Repertory Theatre in Horse Cave on Saturday evening, she won’t be going from a script.

“I’ll get up there and I’ll have no idea what I’m going to say,” Hawn said in a phone interview with the Daily News on Wednesday. “I’ll talk about my life and a little bit about happiness.”

Happiness has been on Hawn’s mind since she was a child.

“When I was 11 years old, people would come up to me and say, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And I said ‘happy.’ They laughed and say again, ‘No, do you want to be a dancer, a movie star – what do you want to be, Goldie?’ And I kind of enjoyed my answer of ‘happy’ because I really believed it. It’s really what I wanted to be. … This was my intention for life,” Hawn said.

What started as an innocent answer has become a passion for the actress, who won an Academy Award for her role in “Cactus Flower” and was nominated for “Private Benjamin.” She also made a name for herself as a regular performer on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” before starring in films such as “Overboard,” “Death Becomes Her” and “The First Wives Club.”

“It’s a great subject matter,” Hawn said of happiness.

Hawn will be sharing her life story and message of happiness with audiences in Horse Cave, Louisville and Lexington this weekend as she brings “An Evening With Goldie” to the bluegrass. The Horse Cave event, sponsored by Toyota Motor Manufacturing, is sold out.

Hawn describes happiness as “ultimately a sense of well-being. That well-being can be enhanced by how you view the world and your place in it.

“I think that we’re born with a set point of happiness,” Hawn said, noting that point varies from person to person and can be changed.

“I think people are stressed and that stress is something that impairs our ability to feel good,” she added. “It’s important to be aware of yourself and to be aware of others.”

Hawn speaks often on the subject of happiness, and the 65-year-old grandmother is especially interested in children. She created The Hawn Foundation, which seeks to provide children with tools to succeed. One way the foundation does that is through the educational initiative, MindUP, a comprehensive social and emotional learning program for kindergarten through eighth-grade students.

“A happy mind is a very productive mind,” she said.

Hawn said Scholastic has published the MindUP curriculum and it is used in hundreds of schools across the country.

She also has a new book coming out soon, “Ten Mindful Minutes: Easy Steps to Joy and Mindfulness for Parents and Children,” which she said encourages parents to find their own happiness and not be reactive in their parenting.

Hawn said she hopes the program will be a fun evening for those who attend and that they take something from it as well.

“It is my life mission,” Hawn said, “to take whatever I’ve learned and pass it on.”