History is littered with countless child actors who failed to make the difficult jump into sustained stardom in adulthood, but there aren’t many better examples for the youngest generation of aspiring actors to look to for inspiration than Kurt Russell.
He’d only recently turned 12 years old when he made his feature film debut in 1963’s musical comedy It Happened at the World’s Fair, and as far as making waves first time out goes, an uncredited appearance that required him to do almost nothing but kick Elvis Presley in the shin was one way of going about it.
That was the only time he shared the screen with ‘The King’ in an official capacity, but Presley continued to be a huge influence on Russell throughout his career. Not content with having one pop culture icon as a massive influence, though, the youngster soon became a firm favourite of Walt Disney.
The man behind the Mouse House signed Russell to a ten-year contract when he was still a teenager, with The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Barefoot Executive finding huge success in establishing Russell as one of Disney’s most marketable assets. More than being his boss, the figurehead of the multimedia behemoth connected with one of his prized performers on a personal level, too.
“He made me feel really comfortable because he knew I liked acting, he knew I liked the world of making movies, but that I liked it from a sort of pure point of view,” Russell explained to Ain’t It Cool. “This could be fun, this could be a cool thing to do, this could be scary, this could be sad, happy, this could be entertaining in some way. He knew that I was interested in it from that point of view.”
Despite his ruthless tendencies at the boardroom and executive level, Russell found Disney to be “very non-intimidating.” Once those days were over, there was still the matter of transitioning into film and television as an adult without the backing of a worldwide conglomerate, which led the actor not only back to Elvis, but straight into the arms of the third titanic influence on his professional life.
That was the only time he shared the screen with ‘The King’ in an official capacity, but Presley continued to be a huge influence on Russell throughout his career. Not content with having one pop culture icon as a massive influence, though, the youngster soon became a firm favourite of Walt Disney.
The man behind the Mouse House signed Russell to a ten-year contract when he was still a teenager, with The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Barefoot Executive finding huge success in establishing Russell as one of Disney’s most marketable assets. More than being his boss, the figurehead of the multimedia behemoth connected with one of his prized performers on a personal level, too.
“He made me feel really comfortable because he knew I liked acting, he knew I liked the world of making movies, but that I liked it from a sort of pure point of view,” Russell explained to Ain’t It Cool. “This could be fun, this could be a cool thing to do, this could be scary, this could be sad, happy, this could be entertaining in some way. He knew that I was interested in it from that point of view.”
Despite his ruthless tendencies at the boardroom and executive level, Russell found Disney to be “very non-intimidating.” Once those days were over, there was still the matter of transitioning into film and television as an adult without the backing of a worldwide conglomerate, which led the actor not only back to Elvis, but straight into the arms of the third titanic influence on his professional life.
Russell teamed with John Carpenter for the first time on 1979’s made-for-TV movie Elvis, which landed him a Primetime Emmy nomination in the ‘Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie’ category. The two hit it off and would go on to become inextricably linked through their classic string of genre films that yielded such greats as Escape from New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China.
He’d even sneakily play Elvis again in Forrest Gump to further that connection, while he was bestowed with ‘Disney Legend’ status as far back as 1998 to celebrate his long-standing relationship with the company.