“I don’t want to look like an idiot here”: the role that made Kurt Russell feel like an “asshole”
Plenty of actors deserve to be called assholes, but not Kurt Russell. He’s one of the rare stars who are about as close to universally beloved as it gets, and the only person who gets to call him an asshole is Kurt Russell, which he did.
For an actor who made their screen debut in 1963, he’s up there with Ron Howard as one of the very few figures who’ve spent their entire life on either side of the camera without being caught up in scandal, salacious gossip, controversy, or feuds. And, no offence to the Happy Days alum, but Russell is also ten times cooler.
His persona as the unruffled and laid-back face of countless cult classics carries with it a certain amount of baggage, which he’s had no choice but to embrace. Russell knows that he’s offered some parts because of what he did in the past, which is why a spiritual successor to one of his personal favourites left him wondering where he fell on the fine line between ego and stupidity.
Funnily enough, that movie was directed by Ron Howard. Russell called his turn in the filmmaker’s fiery blockbuster, Backdraft, “the best thing I’ve ever done,” and it was the only time he’d ever played a firefighter. Well, it was for the next 15 years, at least, when he played another one in Wolfgang Petersen’s ill-advised remake of The Poseidon Adventure.
Did it ever cross his mind that audiences might see him as a firefighter and immediately think of Backdraft? Of course it did, he’s been around long enough for it not to go unnoticed. “It’s funny, because there’s a fine line between ego and stupidity,” he explained to Indie London. “Did everybody in the world see Backdraft and then think I’m an asshole playing another fireman?”
On the plus side, he was sharing a cast with someone who was going through a very similar existential crisis, with one of his co-stars back out on the open water. “Some people pick it up, much like Richard Dreyfuss and I did on set,” he shared. “In Richard’s case, we got to the end of the movie and he said, ‘Is it just me, or did everyone see Jaws?” The truth of the matter is, yes, I did say, ‘Excuse me, I don’t want to look like an idiot here.'”
As a result, Russell wanted to shake off any feelings of assholery that were plaguing his mind by ensuring that Poseidon‘s Robert Ramsey behaved in a completely different manner from Backdraft‘s Stephen McCaffrey. Not that there were any dangers of viewers getting the two confused, since one of them was an entertaining and successful movie, and the other one was not.
Howard’s film notched three Academy Award nominations and recouped its budget almost four times over at the box office, while Petersen’s nabbed a Razzie nod for ‘Worst Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel’, bombed thunderously hard in cinemas, and failed so miserably that it chased the filmmaker out of Hollywood for good.
