From Disney Kids to Movie Legends
12 double features starring our favorite child stars turned cinema icons
Many great stars started out as child actors, but no two icons of cinema have had the unprecedented, impressive career trajectories of Kurt Russell and Jodie Foster. Both became stars working for Disney during an era when the studio was struggling creatively. After Walt Disney died at the age of 65, Walt Disney Productions turned away from the expensive animated features it had built its reputation on and began to concentrate on modest-to-low-budget live-action pictures. While many of these films relied on aging stars from television and Hollywood’s golden age, a few gifted youngsters became major players in a new quasi-repertory company at Disney.
The first and biggest of these young stars was Kurt Russell. Signed by Walt himself, Russell made his first Disney movie, Follow Me, Boys!, in 1966, the year Walt Disney passed away. Russell went on to memorable supporting performances in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band and The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. He then starred in a trilogy of science fiction-comedy films for Disney centered on a college student named Dexter Riley. Born the year Russell started making movies, a nine-year-old Jodie Foster made her feature film debut in the Disney picture Napoleon and Samantha, opposite eleven-year-old star Johnny Whitaker and a lion named Zamba.
Neither Kurt nor Jodie were typical child actors. Russell had a maturity about him that set him apart from his co-stars in all the Disney pictures he made, while Foster’s wisecracking ragamuffin screen persona was the polar opposite of the polished female child stars of every previous era of cinema, from Shirley Temple to Patty Duke. Unlike their contemporaries or the Disney child stars that preceded them, such as Hayley Mills, Annette Funicello, and Kevin Corcoran, both Russell and Foster made seamless transitions from teen stars to lead actors in major Hollywood movies and never looked back. There was no awkward period where casting directors didn’t know what to do with these two, and by 1980 both were name-above-the-title stars.
Kurt and Jodie’s careers span over six decades, with both actors only slowing down when they’ve chosen to focus on family or other pursuits. Both have worked with some of the best filmmakers of each decade and played the leads in iconic movies that have become cinema history. Both have tremendous range as actors while retaining the “movie star qualities” that make us want to see any film they make and watch their films over and over. Coincidentally, many of their pictures happen to make terrific double features, so we’re pairing 24 films by our two favorite Disney kids turned cinema legends.
