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With an actor for a father, a dancer for a mother, and with his formative years spent as one of Walt Disney’s go-to child stars, it was only natural that Kurt Russell wanted to be… a baseball player.
In the 1970s, with dozens of film and television credits to his name already, Russell had no inclination to commit his long-term future to the screen, so he decided to try his luck on the diamond instead. He wasn’t bad, either, but after suffering a serious shoulder injury, his dream was left in tatters.
That placed him in a tricky spot. Baseball hadn’t worked out, and now that he was in his early 20s, he was approaching a pivotal moment in his life. He was no longer the Disney kid, but he still wasn’t 100% invested in his acting career, making the latter years of the decade a make-or-break period on all fronts.
Little did he realise it at the time, as few others did, but turning down the chance to play one of the two male leads in George Lucas’ Star Wars in favour of a TV series that was axed before its first season had even finished airing was a sliding doors moment, but salvation was lurking just around the next corner.
Despite keeping himself relatively busy on the small screen, Russell didn’t appear in a feature film between 1975 and 1980. In danger of going out of fashion, he bet it all on what might have been the most daunting role available to any actor at the time: the recently deceased Elvis Presley.
‘The King’ passed away in August 1977, and in August 1978, John Carpenter’s made-for-television film, Elvis, started shooting. “What are you thinking of? Playing Elvis? Do you think you can play Elvis?” he remembers being asked at the time, and it was a question he’d already posed to himself.
That didn’t mean he was confident that he could pull it off, though, but with few better options on the table, he placed all of his eggs into a single, rhinestone-studded basket. “I know one thing, there’s no in between,” he acknowledged before its premiere. “It’s either going to be really great, or really horrible; just stinking.”
Either way, it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up, with Russell knowing that if he didn’t suck as Elvis, then new doors would open up. “I have waited 17 years to take this big chance,” he pointed out. “And I thought about it for ten minutes.” Mind made up, he embodied ‘The King’, and it was far from horrible.
The comeback kid was rewarded with a Primetime Emmy nomination for ‘Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special’, and the following year, he ended his five-year sabbatical from cinema in Robert Zemeckis’ Used Cars, igniting his career’s second act. All that, and he met that Carpenter fella, too.
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