<\/p>\n
When Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin began casting their sci-fi adventure movie “Stargate,”<\/a> their wish list for the role of Colonel Jonathan J. “Jack” O’Neil consisted of one name: Kurt Russell. There was no back-up option, and there was a very good reason for this. Jack is a no-nonsense military man who basically plays the straight man to James Spader’s loosey-goosey Dr. Daniel Jackson. He is a charisma vacuum. So, rather than cast a hardass type in the mold of Lee Marvin (who was quite dead at the time), Emmerich and Devlin opted to cast a film star every right thinking person in the world loves.<\/p>\n Though “Stargate” is little more than a serviceable B-movie with impressive production values, O’Neil’s grudging allyship with Jackson gives the movie some much needed zip. A touch of on-set tension aside, Russell and Spader<\/a> are great actors who instinctively know how to play their respective types. A 2016 GQ<\/a> profile of the former further revealed that Russell had rebuffed Emmerich and Devlin until they paid him twice his market value. He couldn’t say no to that offer, but he was still baffled by their insistence on casting him. As the star recalled:<\/p>\n “They said, ‘Oh, well, we ran a questionnaire around the world’. They wanted to rate actors on their unlikability. They wanted to find someone who was likable because the part, as written, was not. And they said, ‘You know the only star out there who has zero unlikability?’ ‘Kurt Russell.’ Zero unlikability!” [Laughs] Now, that was a long time ago. That number may have changed significantly.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n