Tough guy actor Kurt Russell gives away a big secret about the remake of Poseidon, but it isn't that he could be mistaken for Mel Gibson or that he's a Scientologist like Tom Cruise or John Travolta.

Steve Pratt sits in on the tough guy actor's international press conference and chats to co-star Josh Lucas about why he gets a thrill out of risking his life.

KURT Russell is deciding whether to lie about his religion. A journalist from Iceland has asked him about being a Catholic who goes to church every Sunday. "I love that, I almost want to leave it there. I do go to church every Sunday," he says, before his conscience gets the better of him.

"That's bulls**t, I can't go down that road although I'd love to go with it. I've never been a Catholic, number one - that's Mel Gibson - and I'venot been to church for maybe 40 years."

As for Scientology, the preferred belief of other Hollywood stars, he confesses he knows little about it but points to Tom Cruise and John Travolta, both Scientologists, "and they have more airplanes, more money and been seen with lots of beautiful women - how bad can it be?".

Such questions are a hazard of journalistic custom known as the international round table. Russell is among the cast of Poseidon, a big budget remake of the cheesy 1970s disaster movie, talking to a congregation of British and foreign print groups.

In a long career - 46 years, he reminds us - he's become immune to rumours about himself. Magazines have never made him a target because he's always made it clear it didn't bother him.

In the new Poseidon, he plays a former fireman (echoes of his hit Backdraft), ex-Mayor of New York and overprotective father whose daughter has got engaged without telling him. In real life, he's not that kind of dad although bringing a boyfriend home to meet your Hollywood tough guy father must be daunting.

He recalls an incident when his daughter was 17. "She's outside with a guy. I opened the gate and they're smooching. I told her to get in," he recalls. Then he noticed the boyfriend was an actor with whom he'd worked in Backdraft. "That's the only time I did anything and it's since become quite a big laugh in our family," he adds.

One attraction of Poseidon was to work with director Wolfgang Petersen, who made two other sea movies Das Boot and The Perfect Storm. Russell also welcomed the chance - and beware, plot spoiler alert - to remedy never having seen a medically-correct underwater drowning on screen.

"It's not dangerous," he says. "What you need is have someone come in at the right time and give you air. It was disorientating and hard to overcome the panic."

You'd think that the prospect of being directed by his long-time partner, Goldie Hawn, would be more daunting.

She's been trying to put together a project, Ashes To Ashes, for eight years and he treated the script like any other, giving her advice on strengthening what he perceived as a weak male character.

Three weeks after hearing his suggestions, she offered him the part. It won't be tough being directed by her, he says, "because I will do what I usually do - try to get the director's vision on screen, that's my job."

JOSH Lucas is a Hollywood leading man who switches easily from big budget mainstream movies to low budget independent pictures.

So he made An Unfinished Life in response to Undertow, in which he played a father thinking of killing his children. "I wanted to go and kiss Jennifer Lopez, to do something that was light and fun and filled with joy," he says of the switch.

Making Poseidon - as one of the survivors fighting to escape an upturned luxury liner - stemmed partly from being in two life-threatening situations himself. "I'm not in any way an adrenaline junkie," he emphasises.

"But something made me think maybe someone is going to die in these situations. I had an extraordinary moment of calm, serenity and respect for mother nature. They all happened in the same moment. I thought if Wolfgang Petersen could capture some of that, that's fascinating."

One incident occured while crewing a sailboat between Seattle and Vancouver when it was hit with hurricane force winds during a storm. Two people went over the side, one without a lifeline. "Everything became slow motion and I was loving it, you're in a life and death situation and you're loving it," he recalls. "I felt it gave me more understanding of myself that storm, that experience."

Perhaps that's why he took the stunts in Poseidon so seriously. Along with the rest of the cast, he did nearly all his own stunts, including diving into and swimming underneath a pool aflame with oil fires.

As well as training, he practised after hours at home. "I would stupidly go home after work, after being in water all day, and swim laps in the pool to see how long I could hold my breath," he says.

* Poseidon (12A) opens in cinemas today.