Media Platforms Design Team

In his best season ever, the New York Yankees' record-breaking third baseman Alex Rodriguez could be seen knocking 'em out of the park — helping catapult his team to victory in the World Series — as a certain A-list blonde jumped up and down in the stands, cheering him on. New Yorkers dubbed her a good-luck charm.

Improbably, she was Kate Hudson, the Academy Award-nominated actress, daughter of Goldie Hawn, and one of the stars of the dazzling Rob Marshall-directed musical Nine (in wide release on Christmas Day). "I'm having a good time right now," Kate says over a glass of champagne at the Odeon in New York's TriBeCa. "It's really fun. It's a blast."

Spotted all over the country together in the last few months — strolling with their kids in Seattle (Rodriguez has Natasha, five, and Ella, 20 months, from his marriage to Cynthia Rodriguez, while Kate has Ryder, five, with her ex-husband, Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson), kissing at a Yankees family picnic, and dining out in Westchester County — Kate and A-Rod seem to be getting pretty serious.

"I'm not pregnant," she says. "I can't go two months without being" — according to the tabloids, that is — "pregnant, engaged, or breaking up because I'm too needy, which is always the one they love. I'm not needy. You kind of have to laugh it off, but it can kind of screw up other things around it.

"I have a child, and there are people involved, and it's unfair to talk about somebody else, especially when you're not in that place yet to be discussing those things," Kate goes on. "If I was sitting here with a belly out to here, I'd be talking about what the relationship is and how important that is in my life right now."

So does that mean she isn't sure of Rodriguez yet? "You're horrible, so horrible," she says, deflecting the question with a big, infectious laugh. Isn't she moving fast? "People don't know where I'm moving," she counters good-naturedly. "They're just reading psychobabble in these [tabloid] magazines." Even when confronted with the evidence — a picture of her kissing A-Rod — she gamely holds her ground. "There's a guy that's shooting probably 60 frames a minute. That was a sideswipe on the cheek. That wasn't even a kiss." So she's not in love with this guy? "I quickly kissed the cheek," she maintains. "And I remember one of the headlines the next day said, MAKEOUT SESSION. What is wrong with people?

"If I walk out on the street with any man, I'm dating him. I've been dating two of my best friends from high school who are like girls to me," she says incredulously. "I'm not going to hide going to breakfast."

And it's not likely the gossip will subside anytime soon. At her Bazaar shoot a few days earlier, Kate was photographed in a white Marchesa dress that resembled a wedding gown, leading to the inevitable speculation that she and Rodriguez are engaged. "No one knows what I'm doing," says Kate. She isn't wearing the diamond ring she's been seen sporting lately, although she does have an antique black-enamel snake ring by Codognato, an Italian jeweler. "My bauble," she says, fishing it out of her roomy bag to spruce up her current ensemble of an Under Armour vest and Adidas sweatpants and running shoes. "There," she says, grinning. "Now I feel better."

Even in gym clothes without any makeup on, her streaked blonde hair pulled back in a tossed-off bun, Kate glows. And she can certainly turn it out on the red carpet. She's been seen in everything from leather by Chrome Hearts to gowns by Versace and Chanel, recently turning heads at a Cartier event in a black Rachel Roy gown with a down-to-there neckline. A longtime friend of power stylist Rachel Zoe — "We have a funny relationship," Kate says with a mischievous smile — she reveals that she's been considering doing her own clothing line.

"At heart, I'm such a hippie," she says. "I don't like structured things. I'll put on a tight, sexy little thing that I can't walk in, and that's fun. But I like the flowy and comfortable. I just want to make really beautiful clothes that I want to put on every day."

But on the night of November 14, 2008, she was dressed to the nines. Sporting a little cobalt-blue Alexander Wang dress with an almost-bare back, Kate, 30, reportedly met A-Rod, 34, at the reopening of the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami. It would come as no surprise if those close to her had warned her to be cautious, but "I don't really have friends like that," Kate says.

According to Cynthia Rodriguez, Rodriguez's wife of five years (she filed for divorce in July 2008, citing "extramarital affairs and other martial misconduct"), he had strayed. And prior to the split, he'd been spotted dining and working out with Madonna. Then, in the darkest moment of his career, in February 2009, A-Rod admitted to testing positive for steroids in 2003.

Kate, ever the optimistic California girl, was not deterred. "My mother never shook anybody's hand. She has kissed and hugged her way throughout her life," Kate says proudly. And growing up, her family had a "no-judgment open-door policy. We were never afraid to bring the wrong person home. They were always open to our failures. And no matter how many times my heart breaks, I'll never be any different.

"I'd rather hang out with the person who's done everything than who's done nothing," she continues. "It would suck to die and not have experienced my life, really. I mean, I think you should keep your eyes open. Blinders are fun for a second, but they have to come off eventually. And I believe it's important to get to know people, to really get to know them."

Today, though, the most important man in Kate's life is Ryder, whom she nicknames Buddy. She and her ex maintain a close friendship. "Chris is a great dad," she says. "I feel really lucky. When we first met, it was so immediate. I had no question in my mind I was supposed to marry him and have children with him."

As for her divorce, she says, "It just wasn't working. It was that simple. I loved him like crazy." And there was no infidelity involved in their decision to separate, she says, despite gossip to the contrary: "That's not what happened."

Regardless of their split, Robinson and Kate amicably share in the parenting of their son. "I'm a pretty strict mom, which is funny," she continues. "I didn't think I'd be so strict. I feel like he is so great, he's such a good kid, people really connect with him, they want to give him things and do things for him, and I'm like, no. The next thing you know, you have the kid who's being cute in order to get something."

In proud-mom mode, she pulls out of her bag a special notebook she's kept since forever in which she has written down pages of Ryderisms. "When he first started talking, he said, 'Mommy, let's get on parachutes and eat the candy-cane sky.' I was like, 'Okay, Sergeant Pepper!'"

She has found that single motherhood "can be okay. I feel like I've learned so much. The routine [of marriage] can kill me. That becomes a difficult balance, too, because I feel like my son needs his routine, but for me I need to step out of my routine. I haven't figured it all out yet."

A close-knit circle of girlfriends, including 90210 star Sara Foster and video producer Juliana Roberts, helps keep Kate grounded. "I don't know what I'd do without my girlfriends," she says. "Let's be honest, I don't care how much you're in love with any man, you need to have your girlfriends to talk to. Without them, we're alone. I don't want to talk to a man about some of the things I feel."

Her thoughts on plastic surgery likely fall into that girls-only category. "If I need to go under the knife," Kate says, "I'm the first one to say I should. But nowadays when you go into a dermatologist's office, they have so many things. What else are they going to come up with? We're gonna end up going into a tank one day and coming out with, like, the perfect face," she says, laughing.

Meanwhile, her career has continued to flourish. And now Nine (which stars a powerhouse of talents, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, and Judi Dench), which casts Kate as Stephanie Necrophuros, a magazine editor and sexpot, promises to show audiences a whole new side to her. "Kate's a life force," Kidman says. "I think what's compelling about her is that she truly sparkles."

Kate sings and dances in the film — a first for her. "I love it," she says. Asked to show off her skills, she laughs and then breaks out into a few bars of the Aretha Franklin classic "Ain't No Way." Her voice is melodic and sure. "I'd like to do more musical theater," she says. "Nine was so much more rewarding to me personally than other things I've done — it was really emotional for me to do the number I do in the film ['Cinema Italiano'] — because I realized I haven't been utilizing some things that I love to do."

Penélope Cruz, for one, was happy to have a coconspirator. "We both studied dance growing up," says Cruz, "so we were happy to be able to do it professionally. Also, we both love food so much. I had to gain some weight for the part, so we would get high from Chinese food. We would go to a Chinese restaurant and eat everything on the menu. We were so hungry from exercising so many hours a day, rehearsing our musical numbers."

"My parents," Kate says, referring to her mom and stepdad Kurt Russell, "always said, 'You came out singing and dancing.' I would take any microphone. I was always talking to myself in mirrors, dancing in mirrors."

Hawn, her daughter notes, was a dancer before she became an actress. "We're like circus folk," Kate jokes. "My mother was a trained ballerina. She was a showgirl in Vegas" — and famously a go-go dancer on Laugh-In — "so I was raised in this community of dancers. When you really love to dance and you're on a stage and you hit something, there's this howl of energy. There's nothing like it," she says with a huge smile.

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