We pick the ten best Kurt Russell movies. From Escape from New York to Bone Tomahawk, all the classics are here.

March 17, 1951 was a great day in history, because that’s the day Kurt Vogel Russell entered the world. And while he would go on to become one of the biggest icons of the eighties and nineties, many folks don’t know that Russell started as a child star for The Walt Disney Company, even acting opposite his future life partner Goldie Hawn in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968) – although they wouldn’t get together until Russell ended up in another movie starring Goldie Hawn, Swing Shift (1984). From the sixties into the seventies, he starred in Disney flicks like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), but as the studio’s movies started to flop and Russell got older, a change of pace was needed. Arguably, Russell’s career took off when he began working with director John Carpenter, with the first movie being 1979’s TV movie Elvis, but what are Kurt Russell’s best movies? Let’s dig into them here.

A few weeks ago, I name-checked Captain Ron in an article I was writing about the history of Touchstone Pictures, and folks went nuts in the comments, mentioning how it was a movie they grew up watching. Indeed, it shows Russell’s flair for comedy, with his one-eyed boat captain kind of a fun take-off on Snake Plissken. The great Martin Short ably supports him.