Kurt Russell Biography

KURT RUSSELL

Date of Birth: March 17, 1951

Kurt Russell is the son of a baseball player turned actor named Bing Russell (he played the Deputy Sheriff in Bonanza). You could say it's a situation of "like father, like son" because Kurt also had baseball ambitions, although he'd begun acting by the age of six with a regular role in the TV series Sugarfoot and by the time he was 12, had the lead in the TV show The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters.

At the age of 14, he starred opposite Fred MacMurray in the hit Disney film Follow Me Boys! (1966) as the tough kid Whitey and in Disney's The One and Only, Genuine Original Family Band (1968), but he gave that all up to try and make it, as his father had, in big league baseball. When an injury put an end to that career, he came back to the movies.

Kurt made a string of Disney feature comedies such as The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him, Now You Don't and The Strongest Man in the World, playing a squeaky clean teenager named Dexter Riley, but when he got the opportunity to play a sniper in the TV movie The Deadly Tower (1975), Kurt jumped at the chance to show his range. He next took on the role of a young man raised by Native Americans in the 1976 TV western The Quest, but when it was slotted into the same time as the hit series Charlie's Angels, his new show didn't last long before it was cancelled.

It was his 1979 performance as Elvis in a made-for-TV movie that established him a star to watch. He married his co-star Season Hubley that same year and they had a son together. A short time later he made a place for himself on Hollywood's A-list of movie stars with his starring performance in John Carpenter's Escape From New York.

A stalwart in the Hollywood food chain ever since, Russell's paychecks kept rising with his popularity. For StarGate (1994) he earned a cool $7 million, $10 million for Escape From L.A. (1996) and $20 million for Soldier (1998). "Hey," Russell says, "If they're willing to pay me that, I must be worth it." He more recently starred in The Art of the Steal (2013), Furious 7 (2015), Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015), the true story epic Deepwater Horizon (2016), The Fate of the Furious (2017), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).

In 2018, he joined the other A-list stars who've made the leap to Netflix when he starred as Santa Claus in the original movie The Christmas Chronicles. He then joined Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino's drama, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). In 2021, Kurt returned in F9: The Fast Saga as Mr. Nobody.

Kurt has been involved with Goldie Hawn since 1983 when the two filmed Swing Shift (although they'd met years earlier when Kurt had a starring role in The One and Only, Genuine Original Family Band and Goldie had a bit part as a "giggly girl"). He divorced his wife in 1984 and has been with Goldie ever since.

For several years, Kurt and Goldie lived in Vancouver, so their son, Wyatt (b.1986) could pursue his dream to become a professional hockey player. They currently also have homes in Snowmass Village, Colorado; Manhattan; Brentwood and Palm Desert, California.

Filmography