The one movie Kurt Russell refused to star in: “I failed to win him over”
Not all child stars find the transition into adult roles easy, with some failing to hone a particularly notable career beyond their early days of stardom, but this certainly wasn’t the case for Kurt Russell. When the actor was just a child, he starred in various movies and television shows, first making an appearance on screen in the 1963 Elvis Presley film It Happened at the World’s Fair. From there, success was right around the corner, and just three years later, he signed a contract with Disney.
Roles in movies like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, The Barefoot Executive, and Now You See Him, Now You Don’t followed, making Russell one of the most successful child stars of his generation. As the mid-1970s rolled around and Russell began to outgrow his time at Disney, he starred in a series of TV films, including John Carpenter’s Elvis, which brought him further acclaim.
Playing the King of Rock and Roll, whom he’d appeared alongside in his first-ever movie, surely felt like a full-circle moment – but that’s not all. Carpenter would go on to direct him again, with Russell appearing in Escape from New York in 1981, which helped to establish him as an action star. Russell continued to land roles in movies drastically different from his Disney days, with more recent credits including The Hateful Eight, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
However, Russell hasn’t accepted every role that has come his way, including a part in a movie inspired by one of the most iconic action thrillers of the ‘70s. Fred Dekker found himself inspired by none other than Dirty Harry when writing Ricochet, which was released in 1991 to mixed reviews. Yet, the director failed to get Russell to star in the movie, something he appears to still regret.
Talking to Flashback Files, the filmmaker revealed, “Unbeknownst to me, I was ripping off a movie I hadn’t seen, which was Cape Fear. I said: What if Harry arrested a guy years ago, and the guy gets out of jail and starts making his life hell? It’s fairly generic up to this point. My producer, Joel Silver, claims to have sent it to Clint, but that doesn’t make any sense. Joel had his own production company. He could just make it himself, which he did. He said that Clint thought it was ‘too grim’ for him.”
This led him towards Russell, who’d spent the past decade asserting himself as an action heavyweight. “There were about five seconds when I was going to direct it. I met with Kurt Russell about playing the cop. That’s when I should have had my Tom Noonan moment. Before I went into that office, I should have said: ‘I have to convince Kurt Russell to do this movie!’ But I failed to win him over. That should be my tombstone: ‘Husband. Father. Failed to win Kurt over’.”
That year, Russell appeared in Backdraft, directed by Ron Howard, instead. The movie fared better than Ricochet, earning three Academy Award nominations. Dekker doesn’t know why Russell turned down the movie, but that’s just the way of the industry.
