Kurt Russell: Major Player

Q: Have you ever done anything on film that made you uncomfortable?

A: The only time in my entire life as an actor when I felt I didn't know what I was doing was on Tango & Cash, when I had to dress up as a woman. It's not an acting chore I'd care to do again. I looked like a really ugly version of my mother, who happens to be beautiful. I don't get transvestism.

Q: Define the difference between an "actor" and a "star."

A: James Spader gave me the best explanation of what a star is. He said when you're a guy and you go to the movies, and you see another guy on-screen and you say, "That guy's really good," that guy won't be a movie star. But when you say, "I don't want to be like that guy, I want to be that guy," that's a movie star.

Q: Did you ever want to be some other guy? Say, Mickey Mantle?

A: Not really, although I would've liked to have had the gifts physically to be able to do what Mickey Mantle did. I would have liked to have not been injured, as I was, and to have been able to have gone on to the big leagues, I wanted to win awards as a ballplayer.

Q: I've heard that a lot of Bull Durham was about you. True?

A: Bull Durham is tough to talk about. Ronnie Shelton and I both lived that life, there were a lot of things in there that were derivative of what had happened to me. I was surprised that Ronnie [did] it with somebody else. I went to Europe on a vacation, having said the script was great, and I came back to discover Kevin [Costner] was doing it. Ronnie got a better deal. So I pulled a practical joke on him that wiped the slate clean for me. I was working on Winter People about 60 miles from where he was doing Bull Durham. I got on the phone, pretended to be [production chief] Mike Medavoy, ordered that Ronnie be pulled off the set, and I told him that the dailies were shit, the movie was shit and Costner was not working, "Here's what we're going to do,"' I told him. "Kurt Russell's 60 miles north of you finishing Winter People tonight. He will be on the set Monday morning." There was this long pause until Ronnie realized who he was really talking to, and then he said, "You son of a bitch!" [Laughing] I had him going for a few minutes, though.

Q: Since we're talking about a baseball picture, are you up for creating an actors' All-Star team?

A: Yeah, we can do that. At first base you want somebody who's going to hit a lot and be an OK fielder, so you want the equivalent of Lou Gehrig, and that would be Cary Grant. Second--I'd go with one of the great comedians: Chaplin. Shortstop-- strong arm, OK fielder, solid up the middle: Katharine Hepburn, Third-- power, good bat, dependable: Bette Davis. Clark Gable in center. Eastwood in left. Goldie in right, because to balance this outfield we need a strong dose of comedy. Behind the plate is easy: Henry Fonda. On the mound, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. With Paul Muni in relief. Marlon Brando as my designated hitter, because I don't know where I'm going to field him. Spencer Tracy can manage.

Q: Besides Eastwood, Goldie and Brando, that's an Old-Timer's team. Let's play them against contemporary opponents.

A: OK, but they're going to get killed. Tom Hanks at first, Tom Cruise at second, Jack Nicholson at short, Barbra Streisand at third. In right, Robin Williams, Paul Newman in center. Mel Gibson in left. Arnold Schwarzenegger catching. Sly Stallone and Meryl Streep on the mound, with De Niro in relief, Jim Carrey as DH. Al Pacino as a player-manager. Now compare that lineup to the other one, there's no comparison, it will be a four-game series.

Q: Since this is Movieline's annual Sex issue, Kurt, here come the sex questions. How many girlfriends did you have in high school?

A: A couple. My take on it was to have at it and have fun.

Q: Was it always fun?

A: Well, there was one girl who convinced me--this was when I was younger, we were both five--that it was actually a good thing to eat your own poop. She'd say, "Go on, do it." And I thought, OK. So I bit it and it wasn't bad. I chewed it and then remembered thinking, "I don't think so." It was at that time that one or both of our moms opened the door. 

Q: Back to sex: who was sexy when you were 15?

A: Brigitte Bardot. Bardot was the first female goddess for me. Though my dad tells this story that Marilyn Monroe was the first person I responded to. We went to a drive-in movie. I used to suck my thumb, and I was sitting in the back seat watching and Monroe came on in Some Like It Hot. I was about six, and the next thing he knew, my dad could feel me on his shoulder, staring at her and sucking my thumb. Generally, though, until the eighth grade I'd never thought about girls at all--I'd been doing a TV series and going to school on the set. When it was done, I went to public school for the first time in a year-and-a-half, and there was a girl named Gail Dougherty, the first girl I really saw. I was very short, five feet tall, and she was also short--and gorgeous. I felt it right in my balls. It was immediate. I was just struck. From that moment on, I've always loved women. They're extraordinary to look at and to be with. It took me four months to work up the courage to ask Gail to go steady, and five months after that to actually hold her hand. I think I kissed her once. It was pretty light stuff, but then I became a fast learner from that point on. In high school, I had a girlfriend as a freshman and a sophomore, and another as a junior and a senior. So I only had two girlfriends in high school.

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