Typically Kevin Costner imagines that he’s watching himself in a movie about Kevin Costner. He footage himself in a theater; it’s darkish and he’s gazing at himself in the identical approach we now have through the years, rooting for him to succeed. In instances of embattlement or stress, he says, “I’ve bought to be my very own film.” In Westerns, Costner’s most well-liked style, the hero tends to journey in, outmatched and outgunned, solely to return away victorious. This typically appears to be the best way Costner sees himself too. Famously, Costner’s first huge break as an actor was being solid in 1983’s The Large Chill; then, after capturing, all his scenes have been reduce. Earlier than he was dropped from the movie, “I had all my buddies going, ‘Kevin, you’re in that film. It’s best to do press. It’s best to journey this wave,’ ” he advised me. “And I mentioned, ‘No. It’ll be a extra attention-grabbing story as soon as I do what I do know I’m going to do.’ ”
Costner is a lifetime devotee of the arduous approach. When Ron Shelton solid the actor in 1988’s Bull Durham, he tried at hand Costner the half, just for Costner to insist on auditioning anyway. “So we went from having lunch to the batting cage on Sepulveda with a bunch of quarters,” Shelton advised me. “And we’re placing quarters in there and he’s hitting line drives right-handed and left-handed, and we’re enjoying catch within the parking zone. Women are strolling by him. They don’t know who he’s. Three months later, they’re going to know who he’s.”
A number of years after Bull Durham, as soon as Costner had turn into one of many greatest stars in Hollywood, he used each little bit of leverage he’d accrued to provide, direct, and act in a film most studios didn’t need: Dances With Wolves. “I had an opportunity to do The Hunt for Pink October for more cash than I’d ever seen,” Costner mentioned. “I felt like Gollum with the ring. I believed, Oh my God, I’m going to take that ring. However I made this promise that I’d go do that film. I needed to watch my very own film.” When Dances got here out, in 1990, it was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and gained seven, together with finest image and finest director.
Costner is now 69. Prior to now decade, he has skilled a revival of types, doing nuanced and charismatic character work in movie after movie whereas starring on Yellowstone, the most well-liked present on tv. Different actors is perhaps content material with their late-career luck. However different actors usually are not Kevin Costner, who’s vulnerable to obsession, no matter what that obsession might value. “I’m so grateful that I’ve by no means seen a UFO,” Costner mentioned. “I’m a reasonably sane individual, though some folks would assume possibly one thing else. However what occurs when you see one? You may’t let it go.”
A kind of obsessions is a Western referred to as Horizon, which Costner—as cowriter, director, and star—has been making an attempt to make since 1988. Over the previous 36 years, the story has advanced, from a two-hander about a few guys to an unlimited, panoramic portrait of the founding of a city—referred to as Horizon—throughout a very bloody chapter of America’s western enlargement, however Costner has by no means absolutely left it alone. In 2003, he was going to make Horizon with Disney, however the director and the studio have been $5 million aside on the finances, and so Costner—by no means one to compromise on one thing he regards as vital—walked away. Then, in 2012, Costner picked the script up once more and, with the screenwriter and writer Jon Baird, turned it into 4 scripts. “And what’s ironic, or if not ironic, possibly a greater phrase is what’s typical of me,” Costner mentioned, “is that if my psychiatrist checked out me they usually mentioned, ‘Kevin, let me get this straight. No person wished to make one, proper? At the very least at that time if you stopped, they didn’t need to make it?’ I mentioned, ‘Yeah.’ And she or he goes, ‘Why do you then exit and write 4 extra? Why do you go and do this?’ And I suppose the reply is: As a result of I consider. However I may see that psychiatrist going, ‘Yeah, however nobody wished one, and also you simply did 4.’ As if I didn’t hear her the primary time. And I can’t defend that psyche. I can’t defend something aside from the story simply stored getting higher and higher for me.”
