Disney
Hollywood legend Kurt Russell recently shared an anecdote from his time making the film Miracle, which saw him portray former US hockey coach Herb Brooks. Russell said he got the best compliment of his career while working on that film.
While Kurt Russell has had an iconic, decades-long career in Hollywood, the famed Tombstone star recently revealed that the greatest compliment he’s ever gotten came while he was making Miracle.
According to Russell, his performance as United States hockey coach Herb Brooks was so convincing that Brooks’ own grandson thought he was watching his actual grandfather on the screen.
Kurt Russell recalled getting the best compliment of his career at the premiere of his movie Miracle
“The best compliment I ever got as an actor was when we did the premiere. Herb’s family was there. The lights went down, the movie started, and about three minutes in, this little voice came out from the audience: ‘Papa.’ It was Herb’s grandson. He was about three years old. I knew then I’d done something right. That was important to me — to get Herb right,” Russell explained.
The frequent John Carpenter collaborator then detailed how he nailed Brooks’ iconic “if we played them 10 times speech,” which literally left men who were in the room that day wondering how he got it so right.
“As far as the speech is concerned, I had some information from Herb about who he was. He was fascinated with how I knew — how I understood so much. I told him I played pro ball and just translated that to a hockey guy. I already knew how to do that. So I had great help in the speech itself,” he continued.
“I didn’t want to violate Herb. I wanted to capture him, even though I didn’t have full access to him. I always figured when the movie came out and Herb saw it, I was either gonna catch hell or something. But Herb had died before it was released. Afterward, a lot of the players came up and said, ‘How did you get the speech? It was almost verbatim.’ So I felt like there was some understanding there — a kind of channeling of the person.”
“My father — my main coach in baseball — died while I was making Miracle. I was on the ice and knew he was in the throes of dying soon. I saw the first assistant skating out toward me and wanted to save him the difficulty of starting that conversation. I said, ‘Did my dad die?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’”
Kurt Russell said the best compliment he got as an actor was during the screening of “Miracle.”
Said Kurt’s family was in the audience and Herb’s grandson shouted out “Papa” during the movie. That’s when he knew he got Herb right.
Worth a listen. pic.twitter.com/oXMezWlo4e
— Alex Walker (@AlexWalkerTV) February 15, 2026
Russell has been a fixture of Hollywood since the 70s but his career really exploded in the 1980s when he played Snake Plissken in Escape from New York, R.J. MacReady in The Thing, and Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China.