“Hey kid, how would you like to kick me in the shin?” Elvis Presley asks a random, freckled boy in his 1963 film, It Happened at the World’s Fair. The boy is wary and suspects that Presley is drunk. Nonetheless, once he is offered a quarter, he takes a step back and swings his foot hard. The King winces. The 11-year-old boy in question is Kurt Russell, in one of his first screen roles.
Russell was born into the business. His father, Bing, was an actor with credits ranging from TV’s Bonanza to The Magnificent Seven (1960). Young Kurt was befriended by Walt Disney who took a paternal interest in him. It’s a measure of Russell’s topsy-turvy screen career that while Uncle Walt may have been his childhood mentor, he ended up doing some of his best work in Quentin Tarantino’s bloodiest, most violent movies. As an actor, Russell has a split identity. On one hand, he is among the most wholesome stars of his era – the type you might cast as the all-American husband or boy next door in a frothy comedy or Christmas flick alongside his wife, Goldie Hawn. On the other, Russell has always been drawn to the dark side. Look through his filmography and you’ll find him playing voyeurs, vigilantes, corrupt cops and even killers.
His credits range from the goofy inanity of Follow Me, Boys! (1966), a Disney movie in which he starred as a reluctant boy scout, to Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007). He has done sci-fi, westerns, romcoms and horror, as well as family movies. He has played blue-collar roles – heroic firefighters (1991’s Backdraft) and duplicitous salesmen (1980’s Used Cars) – as well as white-collar types, for example as the beleaguered yuppie husband in Unlawful Entry (1992). You can hear his voice work in animated features like The Fox and The Hound (1981) and can catch a glimpse of him in some of the Fast & Furious pictures.
