'I'm a movie guy' - Kurt Russell on rejecting Metal Gear Solid voice role

Solid Snake is one of the most legendary video game characters of all time and his creation was inspired by one of the most legendary movie characters of all time, Snake Plissken.

Kurt Russell played Snake to critical acclaim in Escape from New York and Escape From L.A. both of which were written and directed by John Carpenter.

What are the top 10 most popular shows on Amazon Prime right now?

Tuesday 10 February 2026, 14:38

What are the top 10 most popular shows on Netflix right now?

Monday 9 February 2026, 15:27

Hideo Kojima, a fan of both of those movies, used Russell's depiction of Snake as an inspiration for the character of Solid Snake, the primary protagonist of the Metal Gear Solid video game franchise.

Within the games series, he was voiced by David Hayter and then Kiefer Sutherland.

Many fans have wondered why Russell didn't provide the voice, and it seems like he just wasn't familiar with the video game world at the time.

“Look, I’m pretty lazy by nature,” Russell said in a breakdown of his most iconic characters with GQ.

“There have been many different times when people wanted (me) to do something. I don’t know, I’m a movie guy. You have to understand, that from my point of view, whether it’s Elvis, or Snake Plissken, or Jack Burton, or R.J. MacReady, that was that project. That was that thing. You get into that mindset. You create that. You want to make that world happen.

“I used to do interviews when (1979 biopic) Elvis was coming out and they would say, ‘C’mon, do a little Elvis for us.’ It doesn’t work that way, you don’t just slide in and out of Elvis. You go to work on it. You refine it, and then you do it and you get paid for that. I come from a different era. I wasn’t interested in ‘expanding’ financially off of something that we had created or that I had created in terms of a character.”

3.23 (1306)

Escape from New York (1981)

The future: 1997. With crime rates up 400%, a wall is erected around Manhattan in 1988, turning the island off New York into a maximum-security prison. Nine years later, the president's plane is hijacked in protest against the police state and the pod containing the president lands within the walls of the island. Snake Plissken is just about to go to jail. However, he can regain his freedom by rescuing the president from the gangs holding him hostage.

Directed by: John Carpenter
Stars: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef and Ernest Borgnine

Russell wasn't interested in Metal Gear Solid

Ultimately, Russell wasn't keen to portray Snake in any platform for a project that wasn't developed by Carpenter, whom he has collaborated with in no less than five projects.

“I’d look at (a script) and say, ‘That’s not written by John,’” Russell continued, putting his nose to the air.

“That doesn’t smell right. John’s not here to do this. I’m not gonna do that. Let’s go do something new, let’s do something fresh, let’s go create another iconic character, rather than saying ‘What can we bleed off this iconic character?’"