A few weeks ago, the movie Touchback was released to U.S. theatres. I haven’t seen it yet, but I did note its importance in one particular aspect: with the release of that film, Kurt Russell joins the fairly small club of actors who have had roles in films spanning six different decades. What’s particularly interesting is that this isn’t even a case of “oh, he had a minor cameo in a few films each decade.” He’s actually had starring roles in at least one film for every decade from the 1960s onward.
If you’ve stopped to realize that Kurt Russell is only 61, it should become obvious that some of those early roles were as a child star, or rather, a teenage star. In particular, Kurt Russell had several roles in Disney live-action family comedies. In 1969, he starred in the first of a trilogy of films about college student Dexter Riley (spelled Reilly in the first film, but later films changed this). The first film of the three was The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, directed by Robert Butler.
