Kurt Russell Didn't Socialize With His Miracle Co-Stars For A Very Good Reason

If you've ever been to a hockey game before (particularly a playoff contest), you know it's one of the most thrilling experiences in sports. So it's curious that hockey hasn't been grist for more movies. Obviously, "Slap Shot" is an inarguable sports movie classic, while "The Mighty Ducks" franchise might've done more to popularize the sport in the United States than the Edmonton Oilers' trade of Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings.

These are all significant drivers for the popularization of the greatest game on ice in America, but if I were to single out one seismic moment that shook up the country and turned them into puckheads, there's only one answer: the U.S. men's hockey team's shocking upset of the juggernaut Soviet Union team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. The game was not broadcast live, so the entire country was glued to their television sets later in the day, not knowing that an exhilarating outcome was in store for them. I was only seven years old at the time, and I can remember all of it vividly.

They called it the Miracle on Ice, and it was such an exciting, dramatic game that it was only a matter of time before someone turned it into a movie. Amazingly, it took 24 years, but director Gavin O'Connor, working from a screenplay by Eric Guggenheim, made "Miracle" starring Kurt Russell as Coach Herb Brooks. The players were all relative newcomers who'd made very few movies, and certainly hadn't worked with a star of Russell's caliber. So the actor made a curious choice: he stayed away from the boys until it was time to shoot. This might sound like an arrogant creative decision, but Russell did this in the best interest of his co-stars.

In a 2004 interview with Blackfilm.com, Russell explained that he was drawing on his own experience as a young actor when he took this approach. When the star was starting out, he would take time to get to know his co-stars and fraternize with them off-camera. This was all well and good until he had to do the scene. Then Russell found himself giggling during takes because the guy he'd chatted up off-camera was completely different in character. 

Russell quickly realized this goofy game of make-believe was a job. So when he was making the re-watchable "Miracle" with a lot of young men with little to no experience acting in front of a camera, he was sensitive to the awkwardness and insecurity they might feel if he were walking around the set — not because he's a jerk, but because these guys grew up watching his movies. According to Russell:

"I didn't want to have them ... go through the process of getting to know Kurt and then watching Kurt be Herb. And have any sort of confusion there, or any kind of changeover to make. I said it would be dangerous. They're going to have enough to deal with. So I thought the best thing to do would just be stay away from them."

It worked because every single kid in that movie reminds me of so many hockey players I grew up with. They clearly bonded, and that's a huge part of what makes the film so special. And because Russell's a mensch, he finally had the boys over for drinks and goofing around. Per Russell, "I guess it was about two nights to go, I had them all come into the room and we had some beers and I said, 'Yeah, it's good to see you.' But they understood. They really did understand by then."