I could take a lot of heat,'' Kurt Russell says of his up-close-and-personal approach to playing a fire fighter in Backdraft. ''When we started one of the most intense fires, this whole building was going up and I thought, man, this is really hot. It was a bitch and a half. Snot was running out of my nose, I could barely breathe, my eyes felt like they were going to burst. I felt a rising panic. I really wanted out of there bad. I turned around saying my line and the cameraman wasn't there, Billy (Baldwin) wasn't there, nobody was there! The room was completely black smoke. It was sort of a great moment. I said to myself, 'Nobody could ever accuse me of not being totally there.' It was like my fire. I had forgotten that we were making a movie.'' After spending nearly three quarters of his 40 years as an actor, Kurt Russell may finally have found his elusive perfect role-one that lets him forget he's acting. Though the square-jawed former child star has appeared in dozens of films and countless TV shows, he has always claimed to take acting less seriously than a number of his more primal pursuits, namely hunting, speedboats, dirt bikes, flying, and baseball. For a man who, armed with only a jackknife, once took on a wild boar, and who sees acting as a slightly wimpy occupation he isn't sure he respects, the role of hard-driving Chicago fire fighter Stephen McCaffrey was almost too good to be true. In director Ron Howard's $39 million salute to America's flame busters, McCaffrey is a fire fighter's fire fighter-too stubborn to wear his air mask, too hard on his fire-fighter-in-training brother (William Baldwin), and an all-out hero when he should be. ''It's the best thing I've ever done,'' Russell says. ''I worked my ass off on this.'' Much of the role's appeal was that playing a fireman is as close as Russell may get to work he admires. ''It's the only job I've seen in a long, long time that I could see myself being excited enough and proud enough about,'' he says. And unlike most action films, in which stuntmen do the daring stuff and much of the excitement is created in a special effects lab, Backdraft put the actors face-to-face with real flames. ''These actors are in there flat-out doing it,'' Russell says about costars Baldwin and Scott Glenn. ''Putting out fires.'' Russell's career has been in need of real heat for some time. Despite his varied credits-ranging from the no-nuke message movie Silkwood (1983) to the no-brain beefcake fest Tango & Cash (1989)-he has long been stuck on the special back burner Hollywood reserves for second-tier leading men. His critical successes, like 1988's Tequila Sunrise, have often been box office disappointments. Possibly doubting his drawing power, Universal didn't even put his face on Backdraft's poster. But Backdraft may change a lot of minds: It took in $15.7 million its first weekend, a record for a non-sequel opening over the Memorial Day holiday, and has remained No. 1 at the box office. Kurt Russell finally has a hit he's proud of.
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