A Young Kurt Russell Made His Movie Debut Kicking Elvis Presley In The Shins ‘A Bit Too Hard’

At the young age of 11, Kurt Russell landed his first acting gig in the 1963 movie It Happened At The World’s Fair, where he starred alongside the legendary Elvis Presley. In the film, Elvis’ who played the character, Mike Edwards who was a crop-duster pilot had a crush on a nurse, Diane Warren

In order for Mike to have an excuse to see his love interest, he asked Russell’s character, a young boy, to kick him in the shins so he could use the injury to see his love interest. During the filming of the movie, Russell had to kick Elvis about 15 times, and as a result, the King of Rock’ n’ Roll had to wear a pad to protect himself.

Kurt Russell admits that he kicked Elvis Presley too hard

However, Russell admitted in an interview with GQ that he kicked the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll a bit too forcefully during the shooting of the movie but he never quit the scene because he wanted it to look perfect.

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“One time I got close to the edge of it and he looked at me, because he really trusted me, and went ‘Stay on the pad.’ What a nice guy he was,” Russell told the news outlet. “Yeah. He was 27 years old. He was really cool. An incredibly nice guy.”

Kurt Russell claimed he did not know that Elvis Presley was a famous person

The 72-year-old revealed in an interview on the Graham Norton Show that he wasn’t aware that  Elvis was a popular figure at that time he wasn’t. Russell further explained that he only discovered the popularity of the King of Rock n’ Roll when a group of women came to the movie set with hopes of catching a glimpse of him and reaching his car. “It was my first brush with a real celebrity. I’ve never seen anything having to do with a real celebrity before. I didn’t really know who Elvis Presley was,” he told the show host. “I was a 10-year-old kid. I knew Elvis Presley was a name that everybody knew. If I’d seen him, I didn’t know it. I wasn’t into music, and I didn’t listen to music that much.”

“So the first time he came on the set, a car went on the set, around 100’s of women just broke through there and jumped on his car. We were all staring and I was thinking what’s going on there? This guy says ‘Well that’s Elvis. We won’t be able to get him in on this round’. They backed the car up … it was just watching them attack the car. Wow,” Russell recalled the experience. “To a 10-year-old kid it’s like ‘What are they doing? What are they thinking?’ He came out later, through a different way, and he’s just this really nice guy. I was just this kid and I asked him ‘What’s the deal with all those girls jumping on your car?’ He could see that I was just this innocent kid and responded with ‘Ah they get crazy’. I told him ‘You should never come in that way again, you know’. So I remember that. I remembered him having his car completely jumped up with girls.”