Tower Video April 1991

For years he had felt an affinity for acting but wasn't sure if it was a legitimate career. Seeing Burton somehow sparked the internal embers. At first Costner couldn't summon enough courage to approach the great actor. "Finally, I walked up and said 'Excuse me.' He looked up from his book and suddenly all the people from the back (of the plane) were looking up to see what was going on. I said to him, just simply, 'When you're done reading your book, I wonder if you would mind talking to me for a moment. I would like a bit of advice.' I just walked away and left him. I knew I had said exactly the right thing."

Costner sat back in his uncomfortable plane seat and watched ... and waited ... for two hours. "He kept reading his book," recalls the actor/director. "Finally I see him close up his book, put it aside, take his reading glasses off and put his feet up. I think, 'Oh no. Now he's going to sleep.' But he took about 10 seconds of relaxation, then he leaned back, turned, and said, 'What would you like to ask me?' We were three seats away and I thought, 'This won't do at all,' so I said, 'Do you mind if I sit next to you?' He said 'no' and all the passengers' heads go up and look. We talked for about 20 minutes and he finally said, 'I think you should do it.' I walked away and thought, 'I am going to do this!' Him being there (was a sign that) said I can do this."

Though bathed in the realization of his future, Costner recalls turning to his wife Cindy and seeing a look that read, "Have I married a sane man or a 'star chaser'?"

"We had no money left when we came back from our honeymoon, so we had to take the bus home," Costner remembers. "There we were at LAX [Los Angeles Airport], literally sitting on our one suitcase, Cindy on one end, me on the other, looking like something out of The Grapes of Wrath. We're sitting by the curb when this limo pulls up in front of us and the window rolls down. It's Richard Burton. He leans out and goes, 'Good luck to you,' rolls the window up and takes off. All I could think was, 'Wow! Wasn't that neat?"'

Today Costner's a certified box-office star, but even the hardened observer might believe Costner's response to a dozen Oscar nominations in February and the subsequent seven wins in March was also met with a "Wow! Wasn't that neat?" Costner's boyishly shy off-screen demeanor does not reflect his on-screen stature. Recognition by members of the Motion Picture Academy further vindicates his decision to stake a more-than promising career on a three-hour epic western at a time when westerns and three-hour movies were not in vogue with studios or the viewing public.

Seeing films wasn't enough for Costner in his formative years. Film was a way of life. He even recalls incorporating film into school lessons. "I remember getting questions like 'If a train goes 200 mph, how soon before it gets there?' I used to think I'll (film it) at dawn and I'll have the smoke coming this way"

In his senior year Costner saw an ad for an audition. "I met a lot of actors there and really liked that world, but I wasn't sure it was a living." He wondered if it was an excuse not to commit to the world of industry or commerce. "I wasn't sure what 1, was running from. Maybe I had cold feet," he reflects. "I really had a strong feeling about acting that I couldn't explain to anyone."

He began to get roles, at first in small non-union productions: Shadow Run Black, Sizzle Beach, Stacy's Knights and Chasing Dreams. When the latter was released on home video, the releasing company, attempting to cash in on Costner's success with Bull Durham and Field of Dreams, billed Costner prominently, even though he had a virtual cameo in the film. Costner didn't want fans cheated or the company to profit unfairly; he sued and won in an out-of court settlement.

"I didn't work for six years after those movies," he says. "I thought that's not (the kind of film work) I want to do. I'm gonna do something else. I'm gonna make some of the things I do count- I want to be operating in the highest circles."

His ascendancy to such circles began with an appearance in Table for Five, followed by Testament for PBS which led to American Flyers and Fandango. Silverado and The Untouchables drew even more attention to his talents, as did No Way Out. The latter prompted the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) to vote Costner Star of Tomorrow in 1987. Home runs at the box office from Bull Durham and Field of Dreams cemented NATO's feelings with cinema audiences, even if they cooled over Revenge.

Costner avows the source for Revenge [Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison] was, "a great piece of literature that's absolutely engaging. If it had run a literary line it would have been an enjoyable movie," he says. "I take it personally (that it didn't turn out that way)." It was, he admits, the first major film mistake he made.

Revenge was to have launched his directing career, as Costner and his partner Jim Wilson were seeking rights to the script when Rastar Productions acquired it. Producer Ray Stark decided on a name director, Tony Scott, [Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop III for his name cast [Anthony Quinn, Madeleine Stowe]. With the Field of Dreams start date racing closer and closer (growing corn knows nothing of film start dates), Costner reluctantly agreed just to act in the project, foregoing further writing chores or script approval. The subsequent script changes, coupled with director Scott's vision, altered the original intent, leaving Costner and the audience perplexed.

If he was perplexed by Revenge, Costner admits an initial surprise that anyone should put The Untouchables on the big screen. "It's so difficult to make an original film about a story we think we're all so familiar with," he says.

"We've seen 'The Untouchables' before-and so many others in the genre-but Brian (DePalma) left all of them at the doorstep with his version."

Looking back at his role, Costner says, "Brian and David (Mamet) messed so much with the (audience's) expectation of who Eliot Ness is that they created a very original movie." When it first screened for critics, some claimed Ness was portrayed as a softer character than the confident, action-oriented hero of the small screen. "Some people were surprised," says Costner, "and it was a hole I had to get myself out of. But the character gathers a whole lot of momentum by the end of the movie, and I found him a very courageous character. We want our heroes to have all the answers. Ness kills someone and he's sickened by it-it set people back a bit. It doesn't mean he's wimpy, though.

"It had to be a different kind of movie (from the TV series)," Costner says. "If we couldn't do a bigger, more exciting, more explosive movie, then it made no difference to make it, and I saw the potential to do that." Other factors helped, he says. "It took the high road in casting (Robert DeNiro and Sean Connery), script (Mamet) and director (DePalma)."

If the high road was taken with The Untouchables, the hot road was traveled in Silverado and Fandango, according to Costner. The latter film Costner calls tough but fun. "Tough because there were five of us in a little car in the middle of the desert and it was hot," he recalls. As for Silverado, "I played a hothead in that and I hear there's a script being written for 'Silverado 2.' If my friends ride, I will too," he reveals, acknowledging that it's too early to say. Hollywood scripts go through so much rewriting and performers haggle so much over character development that none of the original cast may agree, and the film could be shelved.

One of his friends from Silverado is director Lawrence Kasdan. Costner's appearance in that western is seen by some as a "make good" by the director for leaving Costlier oil The Big Chill's cutting-room floor. To be cut from one movie might seem unlucky, but erasure from a second (Frances) might well be a heavenly sign that a career change is in order. Costner, though, became more determined than ever. "I got more attention (for being cut out of The Big Chill) than if I had been in it," he says. "It was amazing how my stock went up with that movie. It was the association with Larry Kasdan and that group of actors."

Costner says he's become increasingly selective in his film choices. Rejecting roles since The Big Chill not out of spite but because of mediocrity, he acknowledges the right to refuse. "'No’ is a word actors aren't used to saying (when offered a film role)," he says. "They usually say 'yes.' I have to do a movie I believe in, as I'm going to have to promote it and talk about it. If I do a movie just for the money, shame on me! And if I can't be passionate about it..." He shakes his head, looking nonplussed.

Costner isn't ashamed of his role in the upcoming Warner Bros. picture, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Costner was at first pegged for a John McTiernan (Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October) version, but was widely quoted as saying that he didn't want to be in the second Robin Hood film to be made. With three Robin Hood projects scheduled at the same time and Costner under consideration for two of them, it was obvious that the first one made and released would corner the market. As the McTiernan script wasn't completed in time to fit his schedule, Costner turned to the recently completed $50 million Morgan Creek production. Such is Costner's stature in Hollywood circles: The McTiernan project (McTiernan also dropped out) was changed to a television movie for the U.S. (with a film release internationally), and the third project was dropped completely.

Costner claims that Prince of Thieves brings a new approach and attitude to the Robin Hood legend. "We're not reinventing the story, although we are throwing spins on it, and we're playing with the myth a little bit in a dramatic structure."

Robin Hood, though, is the future. To date, Dances With Wolves stands as his most satisfying film experience. While admitting he isn't casual about his career, Costner does allow that "part of life is having fun and I wanted to have fun with this film." Despite the many pressures, he did have fun with it. That's all part of the passion Costner invests in film, especially apparent in Dances. "I wanted to do a movie about how the West was lost, rather than how the West was won," he says. Screenwriter and friend Michael Blake provided him with exactly the right story and the fledgling director set about making it independently-another unusual choice. "There was no precedent to do what I wanted to do or to stretch a relationship (already existing with executives and studios)."

Costner also wanted to do final cuts on his film, but not from a "power standpoint," he insists. "I had never made a movie before and wanted to play with the movie, to discover and play with my own ideas." That Dances runs three hours has raised eyebrows, but, he reasons, "I don't think of the movie as long, I think of the movie as complete. I believe in movies unfolding. I also believe movies have to be their own length. Some should be an hour and-a-half, some should never be made. Some should be 10 minutes, some should be three hours," he says.

Having released the film he wanted, there's another, longer (by more than an hour) version scheduled for a fall release. Both versions will eventually be available on video, with the three-hour Dances in stores in August.

What's best for Kevin Costner's future can be described only by the man himself. "I have a sense of my own career, about what I will do and not do and nobody has that about my career except me," he says. The attitude may not endear him to the movers and shakers in Hollywood, but it does endear Costner to many industry figures and moviegoers. He admits, "I've had a good career and I wouldn't change it. I believe in the magic of movies. I believe that something great can happen."

From obscurity and indecision to fame, accolades and even Oscars, Costner refuses to be swayed or changed by his star status. He fondly remembers the professional firsts and the associated perks. The first time a limousine came to pick him up, he and Cindy went out and took pictures of it, as did the neighbors. "The first time we rode first-class we called our parents." The first time he went to Europe and the first time he traveled on the Concorde were also high points. "I get a chance to enjoy life in a way I never thought I would, and I'm not going to let these things slip by me!"