The movie Kurt Russell quit for a bizarrely specific reason: “This was a mistake taking this role”
In most cases, an actor won’t sign up for a role unless they’ve got a pretty good idea of what they’ll be doing. Whether it’s the character’s arc, the shooting locations, their co-stars, or the costuming, going in blind doesn’t come recommended. In a way, Kurt Russell dodged a bullet by backing out of a movie at the last second after failing to do his homework because it landed with a thud at the box office.
Still, it seems odd that he didn’t have an inkling that a deal-breaking moment would arise deep into rehearsals that left the film’s director without one of their three leads. Russell has dipped his toes into the waters of many genres throughout a career populated by cult classics, and he could have added one more to the collection if he’d simply swallowed his pride and powered through his embarrassment.
Already an expert on successful genre cinema with The Omen and Superman under his belt, Richard Donner sought to expand his filmmaking horizons with his next far-fetched feature. Mixing the period piece with high fantasy, the director had scoped out his backdrops and hired his leads for Ladyhawke, only for Russell to throw a last-minute spanner into the works.
Rising stars Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer starred as a fresh-faced thief who recently escaped from a castle dungeon and an enigmatic woman cursed by dark magic, respectively. Her lover is also stricken by the same curse, one that keeps them together but perpetually apart: he spends his days as a man before transforming into a wolf at night, whereas she spends her days as a hawk before returning to human form in the evenings.
It’s an inherently silly premise for what turned out to be a very silly fantasy flick, making it even more bizarre that Russell couldn’t fathom getting into the spirit of things. He did admit that he “thought it would be fun to shoot a film in Italy for a few weeks and then go home,” despite Goldie Hawn warning him “that I’d be there for several months, and I didn’t believe her.”
However, when the moment of truth came, and it was time to be fitted for Etienne of Navarre’s costume, Russell baulked. “I don’t wear tights,” he declared to Starburst with the utmost conviction. “That’s not for me. I went to Dick Donner, the director, and told him that this was a mistake taking this role, and I was sorry.”
In an attempt to avoid leaving Ladyhawke high and dry, Russell “recommended Rutger Hauer and said he’d be perfect for the part, and I could get him.” The fact they’d never met before didn’t seem to be an issue, with Donner and his team hammering out negotiations with the Blade Runner star while Russell spent two weeks on location with his fingers crossed, hoping that the deal went through.
It did, obviously, with Hauer donning the tights in Ladyhawke, which failed to recoup its budget at the box office before gradually evolving into a cult favourite. If Russell had remained aboard, maybe it would have earned that status sooner, as so many of his films tend to do.
