Kurt Russell

Kurt Russell mini-bio: Russell started his film career at the age of ten in an uncredited part in Elvis Presley's It Happened at the World's Fair. At the age of twelve he landed a big part for a juvenile actor: the lead role as the orphan Jaimie in the TV western The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963–1964). Based on a book by Robert Lewis Taylor, this series also starred Dan O'Herlihy, Charles Bronson, and the young Osmond Brothers.

The young Russell was soon signed to a ten-year contract with the Walt Disney Company, reportedly by Walt Disney himself.[citation needed] He starred in many Disney films, such as Follow Me, Boys! (1966), The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968) with newcomer Goldie Hawn as his baby sitter, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), and The Strongest Man in the World (1975).

Russell also had a baseball career (Russell's father had been a baseball player). In the early 1970s, Russell played second base for the minor league affiliate of the California Angels (now the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). He led his league in hitting with a .563 batting average. During a play, he was hit in the shoulder by another player running to second base. The collision tore the rotator cuff in one of Russell's shoulders. The injury forced his retirement from baseball in 1973, and he returned to acting.

Russell was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special (1979) for the made-for-television film Elvis. This would be his first pairing with John Carpenter, the director of Halloween. Over the next decade, Russell would team with Carpenter several times, and help create some of his best-known roles, usually as anti-heroes, including the infamous Snake Plissken of Escape from New York. Among their collaborations was the 1982 remake of The Thing. In 1986 the two made Big Trouble in Little China, a dark kung-fu comedy in which Russell played a truck driver caught in an ancient Chinese war. The movie, while a flop (much like The Thing), gained a cult audience, and even inspired a few other films, as well as the video game Mortal Kombat.

He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (1984) for his performance opposite Meryl Streep in Silkwood.