Kurt Vogel Russell was born on March 17, 1951, in Springfield, Massachusetts, and raised in Thousand Oaks, California, to Louise Julia Russell (née Crone),a dancer, and Bing Russell, an actor.
He is of English, German, Scottish, and Irish descent. His first roles were as a child on television series, including a lead role on the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters in 1963.
Russell landed a role in the Elvis Presley movie, It Happened at the World's Fair, in 1963, when he was eleven years old. Walt Disney himself signed Russell to a 10-year contract, and, according to Robert Osborne, he became the studio's top star of the 1970s.
Having voiced adult Copper in the animated Disney film The Fox and the Hound in 1981, Russell is one of the few famous child stars in Hollywood who has been able to continue his acting career past his teen years.
Kurt spent the early 1970s playing minor league baseball. In 1979, he gave a classic performance as Elvis Presley in John Carpenter's ABC TV movie Elvis, and married the actress who portrayed Priscilla Presley in the film, Season Hubley.
He was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role. He followed with roles in a string of well-received films, including Used Cars in 1980 and Silkwood in 1983, for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture.
During the 1980s, he starred in several films by director Carpenter; they created some of his best-known roles, including the infamous anti-hero Snake Plissken in the futuristic action film Escape from New York in 1981, Antarctic helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady in the horror film The Thing in 1982, and Jack Burton in the fantasy film Big Trouble in Little China in 1986, all of which have since become cult classics.
In 1983, he became reacquainted with Goldie Hawn when they worked together on Swing Shift in 1984. The two have lived together ever since.
They made another film together, Garry Marshall's comedy Overboard in 1987. His other 1980s titles include The Best of Times in 1986, Tequila Sunrise in 1988, Winter People in 1989, and Tango & Cash in 1989.
In 1991, he headlined the firefighter drama Backdraft, he starred as Wyatt Earp in the Western film Tombstone in 1993, and had a starring role as Colonel Jack O'Neil in the science fiction film Stargate in 1994.
In the mid-2000s, his portrayal of U.S. Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks in Miracle in 2004 won the praise of critics. In 2006, he appeared in the disaster-thriller Poseidon, and in 2007, in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof segment from the film Grindhouse.
Russell appeared in The Battered Bastards of Baseball in 2014, a documentary about his father and the Portland Mavericks, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014.
Russell starred in the Western films Bone Tomahawk in 2015 and The Hateful Eight in 2015, and had a leading role in the dramatization Deepwater Horizon in 2016. He also co-starred in the action sequels Furious 7 in 2015 and The Fate of the Furious in 2017.
Russell and Goldie Hawn live on a 72-acre retreat, Home Run Ranch, outside of Aspen. He has two sons, Boston Russell and Wyatt Russell, and also raised Hawn's children, actors Oliver Hudson and Kate Hudson, who consider him their father.
Russell is also an avid gun enthusiast, a hunter, and a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. He is also an FAA-licensed private pilot holding single/multi-engine and instrument ratings, and is an Honorary Board Member of the humanitarian aviation organization Wings of Hope.
