More than 20 years after the film’s release, the character of Penny Lane continues to captivate legions of fans and is considered Kate Hudson’s breakout role. For her moving performance, Hudson was nominated for an Academy Award and won her Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. In her 2020 interview with The Independent, Cameron Crowe declared that “Kate was magical” and “brightened up her room.”
Hudson told The Independent that Penny Lane was inspired by “female fusion”, but it was the famous rock group Pamela de Valles who primarily influenced Crowe. With a bright smile and curly hair, De Barres has fallen in love with legends like Frank Zappa, Jimmy Page, Jim Morrison and Keith Moon. She detailed her experience in her 1987 memoir, I’m With a Band: Confessions of a Groupie. In a 2020 interview with Vulture, she said that Lane “doesn’t own herself and the grouping and that I didn’t own what it actually meant.” Although she doesn’t hate the film, she was upset that Lane was “stolen” and her character was “ripped off” from her because Lane wasn’t a consultant on the film.
Hudson also studied the real Penny Lane, aka Penny Trumbull, who was known for forming a group of band promoters called the Flying Garter Girls Group. Each girl has a nickname similar to the “Almost Famous” Band-Aid crew, which consists of Polexia Aphrodisia (Anna Paquin), Sapphire (Fairthe Bork), and Estrella Starr (Bijou Phillips). “I chatted a lot with the wives of rock stars at the time. It was a wild time and the rules were very different.” [Penny] It captures freedom and free-spirited love, and it’s like living a nomadic g**** lifestyle in a rock ‘n’ roll world,” Hudson told The Independent.
