Kurt Vogel Russell (born March 17, 1951) is an American actor and celebrity. He started acting as a child in Hollywood films during the 1960s, and has continued appearing in a wide variety of films since, including The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from New York, Silkwood, The Fox and the Hound, Stargate, Backdraft, Tombstone, Vanilla Sky, Poseidon, and Grindhouse.

Russell was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Louise Julia (née Crone), a dancer, and Bing Russell, a character actor known as Deputy Clem Foster on Bonanza. Russell considers Rangeley, Maine, to be his hometown. In the mid-sixties, Russell graduated from the Thousand Oaks High School in Thousand Oaks, California.

Russell began his career with an appearance as a child in the pilot of the ABC western television series Sugarfoot with Will Hutchins. His film career began at the age of eleven in an uncredited part as "Ugly Child" in Elvis Presley's It Happened at the World's Fair and two extra episodes, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the then defunct series 'Rin Tin Tin. On April 24, 1963, Russell guest starred in the ABC series Our Man Higgins, starring Stanley Holloway as an English butler to an American family. He also appeared in 1963 as Peter Hall in the episode "Everybody Knows You Left Me" on the NBC medical drama about psychiatry The Eleventh Hour.