Why Kurt Russell Didn't Consider Himself An Actor Until He Was 40

Many of his fans know that Kurt Russell made his big screen debut in 1963 when he kicked Elvis Presley in the shin. The film was "It Happened at the World's Fair," and Russell was only 12. By then, though, he already had his foot in the door on television, having made an uncredited cameo in an episode of "Dennis the Menace." Russell, even a kid, was an assured and confident performer, and casting directors loved him. The same year as "World's Fair," he landed the titular role in the TV series "The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters" and regularly turned up on hit shows like "Lost in Space," "Gunsmoke," "Gilligan's Island," and dozens of others. Then, in 1966, he famously signed a 10-year contract with Walt Disney and went on to appear in multiple high-profile Disney flicks as a teenager.

In the 1980s, Russell continued apace, finding comfort in a wider variety of roles. He worked with director John Carpenter multiple times, yet he remained an A-lister, starring in movies opposite Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone.

Despite his decades of success as an actor, though, Russell never liked to think of himself as an actor. He loved baseball and nearly left acting multiple times to play professionally. He had a knack for storytelling and often considered himself a writer as well, although he never thought too seriously about his performing craft. Russell said as much when he was extensively profiled by GQ Magazine back in 2016. There, he admitted that he didn't start writing his profession as "actor" on passport forms until the 1990s. This was around the same time he was making films like "Backdraft" and "Tombstone," which required more of him as an actor than, say, "Tango & Cash" or "Big Trouble in Little China." Also, Russell turned 40 in 1991, so he likely wanted to rethink some things about his life when he reached the approximate middle of it.

When asked to write down his profession, Russell admitted:

"I used to write 'writer,' 'ballplayer,' anything but 'actor,' [...] I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it, until I was about 40 years old. I just couldn't. I was, 'That's not what I am'. It was stupid, because I'd been starring in television shows and movies since I was 11. It was just me."

What's more, Russell was once married to an actor, Season Hubley, in 1979, and has shared the screen with his longtime partner, Goldie Hawn, many times since 1983. What's even more, his father, Bing Russell, was also a professional actor, having appeared in everything from "Wagon Train" to "The Twilight Zone" and "Little House on the Prairie." Of course, Russell's father was a baseball enthusiast and the owner of the Portland Mavericks to boot, so the young Kurt likely saw baseball as his family's legacy, not acting. Acting was a gig, not a character-defining feature.

More than anything, though, Russell felt that acting wasn't labor-intensive or important enough to be considered "work." He looked around at the blue-collar workers of the world — people who actually hustled and toiled and sweated — and felt that, in comparison, acting was frivolous. As he put it:

"I have a secret admiration for insurance salesmen, doormen, taxi drivers, guys working on the Alaska pipeline ... many hundreds of jobs where they work. There's lots of jobs now in the world where we don't work, we push a button. I don't work. I've never worked."

This was Russell's way of saying that he's always been on Easy Street, and he knows it. Acting gets him a lot of money, but he's no laborer.

Russell's definition of work is something that requires labor and committing one's self to a job they don't like. He, on the other hand, has always liked his work. Indeed, when he signed that 10-year contract with Disney, his youth was pretty much taken care of, at least financially. Russell has also told stories about how he and Walt Disney used to play ping-pong and spitball ideas for upcoming movies. He played baseball incessantly during this time as well, eventually getting involved in other outdoor activities like boating and piloting airplanes. The actor even owns a winery these days. Basically, Russell sees his whole life as a series of hobbies. As he put it: 

"I take great pride in the fact that I played baseball, I drove race cars, I drove racing boats, I flew airplanes, and I acted. None of those things are work. Doing what you want to do, that's not work. When you're working, you're doing sometimes things that you don't want to do — you'd rather be doing something else. That's work."

Russell went on, however, to admit that he had been carrying a stigma against acting for many years. Russell, it seems, tied labor to masculinity. Acting, in not being laborious enough, wasn't a wholly "manly" profession. The actor, perhaps concerned with his own masculinity, chose to see himself as anything other than an actor. In the GQ interview, Russell did eventually confess that he often thought about a quote he heard as a youth: "Every actress is a little more than a woman, and every actor is a little less than a man."

But these days, Russell embraces his profession. He no longer cares about appearing manly. He even admitted that he doesn't have the "work gene" that he admires. Instead, he's just filled with gratitude. "I'm so thankful," he explained, "that I live in a place to get the opportunity to do what I do. You know, being 'less.'"