Kurt Russell: Major Player

Q: Leaving Goldie off the list, who would you consider truly beautiful?

A: For me there's never been a woman more beautiful than Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Marty Short likes to play this game: "If you had to spend one night with any woman--in her prime--who would it be?" And he gives you three choices, like Catherine Deneuve, Michelle Pfeiffer and Grace Kelly. After you pick one, he'll add two more: let's say, Deneuve, then Ingrid Bergman and Marilyn Monroe. Then: Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and Mamie Van Doren. Well, the only one I've never seen beaten is Bardot. No matter who you pair her up with, Bardot wins. The one-night deal is Bardot.

Q: When you and Goldie are at home, ready to watch a movie in the VCR, are there any in particular that you like?

A: Most Sunday nights, over the last three years, we have an open house. Friends come over to eat and talk. Often Bob Towne will bring over two old movies and we'll study them, talk about the director, the actors, the script. Bob Towne is great to watch a movie with. We talk about things we try to capture when we work, and it makes for great conversation. Bob Zemeckis, Marty and Nancy Short, Meryl Streep and Don Gummer, Sally Field, Sly Stallone, Gail Strickland--and other friends who are not in the business--often join us. One time we went over to the Spielbergs and watched The Sugarland Express with Goldie and talked about it. We picked up Sean Penn in a bar one night, came home and talked deep into the night.

I look at those nights as part of old Hollywood, how it must have been for Stewart and Fonda and all those friends to get together 40 years ago and talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. It's made me feel that there's part of this community that I can really feel close to.

Q: So you're proud to be a member of the Hollywood community?

A: At times I take great pride in it. But most of the time I'm completely ashamed of it, especially on the night of the Academy Awards. It's the one night of the year where I just want to crawl in a hole and hide. It's a bit like standing shoulder-to-shoulder with assholes. Mike Nichols and I were talking about politics once and he said, "The thing is, you can't stand shoulder-to-shoulder with assholes." And he's right. I can't. What's interesting about Oscar night is it's a joke--it's about how bad everything is. Everybody knows that that's the night to applaud Hollywood in all its horror.

Q: And yet...

A: There's no other business that can create such enjoyment of life as this business. I love being part of that. Actors have changed my life at times. When people get to know me, I can't tell you how many times they come up to me and say, "You're nothing like what I've read about."

Q: How do you think you come off in print?

A: I think people feel me more than they hear me. I've read interviews I've done and it's exactly what I've said but it's not what I was saying. I have an acerbic, sardonic sense of humor. I'm being facetious 90 percent of the time, but then 10 percent of the time I'm not. So unless I was to qualify everything I say, I'm not going to be understood.

Q: Your opinion of journalists in general has never been very high, has it?

A: As a type of person, they're pretty despicable. They repulsed me in high school, they repulse me now.

Q: How do you think you're perceived?

A: Until recently, I'm generally perceived by the media as a sort of young Charlton Heston. What I think of Charlton Heston is: pro-NRA in the negative ways, Republican in a staunch way, unable in intelligence to get past what you don't understand, and lacking in abstract abilities. Those who know me well know that [comparisons to Heston] could not be further from the truth.

Q: Who do you think you are like?

A: I am like Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin. I love life. I have a comic outlook, I laugh at myself harder than at anybody else. I get extremely vociferous about things I don't believe in, but I'm in the moment. Benjamin Franklin loved life, he wasn't a negative person. And I do sense that I'm being more perceived like that now.

Q: Given your outspokenness, have you ever considered entering the political arena?

A: No. I'll tell you what, though. The people who laughed at my political beliefs 10 years ago aren't laughing anymore. People like me are voting people who think politically like me into office.

Q: Let's talk about your passion for hunting and where that started.

A: My grandfather owned a hotel along Kennebago Lake in Maine. It had 31 log cabins and was built in 1887. I grew up watching all the guys going out in snowshoes while I played with my sister in the yard, and they'd come back with a deer. And then I got old enough to go with them. I grew up thinking that was the way to live. You could feed yourself, you could have corn in your garden, you could stock things in a barn, you didn't need anybody to do anything. And my grandparents were doing that. My grandfather was a phenomenal shot. And I watched my dad shoot deer, impossible shots when I could barely even see the deer.

Q: Did your first wife, Season, appreciate your hunting enthusiasms?

A: Day before we got married she told me it really offended her and that she was avidly against it.

Q: How does Goldie feel about it?

A: Goldie's a great game cook. We have a party every New Year's Day in Old Snowmass where everybody just watches the football games and they have Goldie's elk stew. We cook as much of the stuff as we can and finish it every time. And she enjoys that.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5