Kurt Russell’s biggest issue with being the king of the cult classic: “Crap. Fucking crap”
Although there’s a case to be made that cult classics can’t be manufactured, engineered, or made intentionally, Kurt Russell sure has a way of sniffing them out.
It’s placed him in an unusual position that few, if any, of his peers can match: he’s one of Hollywood’s longest tenured veterans who’s been acting since he was a kid, and he’s regarded as a dependable fixture of the A-list, but the greatest and most iconic roles of his career have come largely in B-movies.
Only in name, though, to be clear. Few figures in cinema have notched as many enduring favourites as Russell, and for the most part, he’s done so by playing either rugged badasses or everymen out of their depth who audiences still believe can get the job done because he’s so damned handsome, charming, and charismatic.
Russell’s nose for a cult classic even extends beyond his own filmography, with the star confidently informing his Soldier director, Paul WS Anderson, that Event Horizon was destined to join the pantheon. Funnily enough, his instincts were right on the money, because the sci-fi horror definitely fits the bill.
Of course, there are some genuine classics in his back catalogue, but it’s the cult flicks that helped define Russell’s legacy. He’s named Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, Used Cars, Overboard, and Tombstone as his personal picks, but that barely even scratches the surface.
Bone Tomahawk, Breakdown, his Snake Plissken reprisal in Escape from LA, costumed comedy Sky High, the aforementioned Soldier, the sci-fi blockbuster Stargate, buddy actioner Tango & Cash, and even the crime thriller Dark Blue are all worthy of being included in the actor’s cult classic library.
And yet, if there’s one thing he hates about his reputation, it’s the way he’s perceived. Complaining about playing so many cool characters in a sprawling selection of unsung, underrated, and guilty pleasure films is nothing if not a first-world problem, but it’s better if Russell remains firmly out of earshot whenever anyone declares him the embodiment of onscreen, all-American machismo.
“Crap. Fucking crap,” he told Cigar Aficionado of being branded the B-movie’s most macho leading man. “My family reads that stuff and just shakes their heads. They laugh about it, my sisters do, and my mom does, because they want to know who that guy is that they’re reading about. It sure as hell isn’t me.”
Taking a sledgehammer to his persona and no doubt destroying several childhoods in the process, Russell wants everyone to know that he isn’t, in fact, a macho man. He’s played a few in his time, but at no point in his life has he seen himself as anything other than a gentle and delicate flower.
Maybe that’s a stretch, but it just goes to show that life doesn’t always imitate art.
