(Credits: Far Out / Apple TV+)
Mon 27 April 2026 16:45, UK
Even though he’d been acting since the early 1960s, it would be another 30 years before Kurt Russell entered the big leagues, and by the big leagues, we mean the big bucks.
While it had been a long time since he’d worked for pennies, with the actor typically commanding a multi-million-dollar salary for any movie in which he played a major role, it wasn’t until Roland Emmerich’s Stargate that he entered one of Hollywood’s most rarefied brackets.
The sci-fi blockbuster paid him a bumper $7 million fee for his services, and after it succeeded at the box office, his quote had been permanently bumped up a level. Executive Decision forked over roughly the same amount of cash to cast him in the lead, before the return of Snake Plissken upped the ante.
Reuniting with John Carpenter in Escape from LA, Russell entered the $10m club for the first time in his career, and as much as that wasn’t the greatest investment when the sequel failed to recoup its budget from cinemas, it didn’t do a thing to dent his earning power. In fact, it only increased.
In his last film of the 20th century, he returned to the genre responsible for several of his most iconic hits, but it would be an understatement to say that Paul WS Anderson’s 1998 dud, Soldier, wasn’t a sci-fi flick on the same level as Escape from New York, The Thing, or even the mediocre Stargate.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it was crap. The only interesting thing about the picture is that it’s technically a Blade Runner sequel, not that audiences gave a shit. It was one of the year’s biggest bombs, not that Russell gave a shit about that, because it paid him an absolute fortune, and allowed him to set a world record in the process.
“15 million bucks,” he beamed, reflecting on the motivating factor behind his decision to play Sergeant Todd, the stoic military officer dumped on a far-flung planet and left to fend for himself, which pits him opposite the next generation of super-soldiers who’ve made it their mission to wipe him out of existence.
“By the way, I think I have the record,” he added, suggesting that nobody in the history of cinema had ever been paid more for a film on a word-by-word basis. “Divide 69 words by $15 million. I don’t think anyone will ever top that; $278,000 per word, or something.” His memory is a little off, but he’s not wrong.
Based on his recollection of the word count, it equates to $217,000 per soundbite, and he still had to suffer for his art after breaking his ankle after tripping over an ornamental cabbage, of all things. Despite being in agony, he bravely carried on, although he had his obvious reasons: “Come hell or high water,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna let that payday go away.”
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