USA TODAY

 

Sometimes, an actor has to draw a line in the sand, and if it were an up-and-coming young performer or someone trying to get his foot in the door, so to speak, then it would be a completely unique situation. But when you're Kurt Russell, and you've already risen to the top level of Hollywood stardom in a variety of roles ranging from westerns to tough guy thrillers, then it is something else. So when director Richard Donner came to the celebrated leading man to star in his 1985 fantasy drama Ladyhawke, Russell said no. It's not that he said no to Donner that is unusual. Actors turn down roles all the time for a variety of reasons. But Russell's reason for passing on Donner is hilarious.

Why Did Kurt Russell Say No to ‘Ladyhawke’ and Richard Donner?

By the time Richard Donner came calling for Russell to play the role of Captain Etienne of Navarre, he had already established his bona fides as a rough-and-tumble, rugged protagonist in hardcore thrillers like Snake Plissken with his tank top and eye patch in Escape From New York and R.J. MacReady with his floppy hat and flamethrower in John Carpenter's The Thing. Audiences had grown accustomed to seeing Russell kicking ass and taking names on the big screen, as the success of both of these films would indicate. When he read the script for Ladyhawke and saw that his character would be wearing tights, he flat-out refused to do the film. And keep in mind, it is not as if Donner was an inexperienced first-time director, either. He had crafted huge hit movies like The Omen and was coming off of great success with the first two Superman entries.

In an interview with Whitney Scott Bain of Starburst Magazine, Russell plainly stated, "When I got there, I saw the wardrobe, and the character has to wear tights. I don't wear tights. That's not for me." There were some other contributing factors, but this aspect of the character was something Russell just wasn't willing to do. You have to admit, it's difficult to see an actor of Russell's stature and the trajectory his career was on at that time running around like a grown-up Peter Pan or someone out of Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Playing a French captain/wolf in a cursed love affair with a beautiful damsel/hawk separated by sunset and sunrise was also a bit far-fetched for a guy like Russell. Sure, he has done his fair share of light-hearted roles, comedies, and rom-coms during his career, like Overboard, Used Cars, and even in the bomb Captain Ron, but sometimes you have to decide which hill you're willing to die on, and for Kurt, it was on Mount Wearing Tights. We'll get into other issues, but this reason for not doing a feature film is by far the funniest.

Kurt Russell Was in Love With Goldie Hawn, Too

Image via  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Love will also make a person make rash decisions. And when Russell discovered that the shoot would have him in Italy for close to a year and away from his burgeoning relationship with Goldie Hawn, it was simply a bridge too far. Richard Donner told Tom Mankiewicz, "She was in L.A., and he was about to spend eight months in Italy. He thought he would lose her forever." Seeing how he had found the woman who would become his lifelong soulmate, it seems that Russell would have said no and made the right decision no matter what the project had been.

Combining these two factors with ongoing SAG AFTRA and a writer's guild strike that was ongoing back in the United States in the early 1980s, it seems that Ladyhawke, starring Kurt Russell, was never going to happen. Instead, Russell suggested Rutger Hauer for the part opposite a post-Scarface Michelle Pfeiffer and a pre-Ferris Bueller Matthew Broderick. The film turned out just fine, but for Snake Plissken, it was never in the cards to lead it, and Hauer was probably always better suited to being in a medieval fantasy romp.