How to Never Go Out of Style

He’s been a killer actor for half a century—but never a noted thespian. He’s starred in a dozen blockbusters, but no Batmans, no Supermans, no Spider-Mans. His family is peak Hollywood—comedylegend partner, gorgeous actor kids—but there’s nothing show bizy or gossip-y about him. He’s always just been KURT RUSSELL— decent, unfussy, great hair, hall-of-fame squint—and he’s always been just right

- Chris Heath

Russell’s contrary streak has led him down a fascinating path over his 54-year career. He has zigged and zagged in ways that often seemed to defy logic. “Someone said,” he notes, “ ‘Your career looks like it’s been handled by a drunken driver.’ And I laughed and said, ‘That’s true!’ Because that’s the way it looks.” And yet it’s a path that has made him, at 65, wealthy and successful—and as in demand now as he’s ever been. Quietly, but also in plain sight, he’s become one of his era’s most beloved and respected actors. And it had to unfold like this, he says: “If I’d had a different career, I don’t think I’d have been very interested.”

Are there any lessons to be drawn from such a unique life? Perhaps a few. Not rules, so much. Just signposts and stories that might help us understand how one very singular man found his way.

Be likable (but don’t let anyone else tell you how).

In 1980, when he was 29, Kurt Russell’s adult career was beginning to gather momentum. But as he and director John Carpenter were preparing for his role as Snake Plissken in the dystopian Escape from New York, Russell remembers, they faced a dilemma.

“Snake Plissken,” says Russell, with perhaps a little pride, “was the first character that I can think of where he had no social redeeming value. A lot of the male stars of that time, if they were going to play a role where they seek revenge, that was their social redeemability—they showed the wife and kids getting burned in the house by the Mafia, or whatever. Or, if it was a Western, some terrible thing being done, and now it’s time for payback. We didn’t do that.”