In the 1980s, Kurt Russell shed his image as the teenaged lead of a ton of Disney movies to become a big screen hero. He’s the star of classics like “The Thing,” “Escape from New York,” and “Big Trouble in Little China.” In the early ’90s he pivoted to dramatic thrillers like “Breakdown,” “Tombstone,” and “Backdraft,” but then returned to science fiction in 1994 with “Stargate.” In the decades since its release, “Stargate” has stayed a fan favorite and is generally considered one of Russell’s best films — including by us. But his role as Jack O’Neill — a military man who leads a mission across the stars — could have turned out very different. It was Russell himself who had one strange request for the character, demanding that his hair be lightened and cut.
“For two or three weeks there was only one discussion, [and] that was the hair color of Kurt,” said producer Roland Emmerich on the movie’s commentary track (available on most of the film’s DVD releases). “Because he wanted to have a lighter tone in his hair and [he wanted] his hair cut.” It was a shade and a cut that they all agreed to, but it doesn’t seem like anyone but Russell was very happy with it. Emmerich claimed that, years later, he’d read a popular magazine column about the dumbest haircuts in Hollywood movies. Russell’s haircut was apparently right there on that list.
Russell turned down Stargate repeatedly, but not over his hair
When making a blockbuster film, producers have to convince a studio that their story is worth bankrolling. In the case of “Stargate,” though, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich were making the movie on their own, without major studio backing. Part of getting investors to sign on meant finding a star who could put butts in seats. For Devlin, Kurt Russell was their man, but it took some serious lobbying to get the “Escape from New York” actor to sign on.
“[Russell] would be a really great name for foreign sales since we were doing the movie independently,” Devlin told Variety. But the actor turned down the role multiple times because he wasn’t happy with the script. A big payday eventually got him to sign on the dotted line, but the irony is that the script he didn’t like wasn’t the one they were ever intending to use. “What we found out is that he had been given the wrong script,” Devlin says. “He was given a very early draft of the script that should never have gotten out. So, when he actually saw the shooting script he went, ‘Oh, this isn’t so bad.”‘
Eventually, with the right tweaks — including a hairstyle that’s since become iconic — Devlin, Emmerich, and Russell had a major hit on their hands. Releasing in 1994, it hit it big at the box office to the tune of $156 million (adjusted to about $434 million in 2025). While it might be considered by some — including us — to be an overrated ’90s sci-fi movie, it’s still a ton of fun.