A Look Into The Multifaceted Journey Of Kevin Costner’s Life And Career
Two-time Academy Award-winner Kevin Costner has enjoyed a remarkable career as an actor and director but has also maintained a grounded perspective on life during even his highest highs, thanks to a modest background, hard work, and complete dedication to his craft.
That perspective has not only made him an enduring hitmaker decades after his big break, but it also explains why he made certain career decisions. And it's something he's had many opportunities to express in a job that's brought his life's passions to the big screen.
A modest background
Although Kevin Costner was born in Lynwood, California, his family roots are in Oklahoma, and their history is marked by the struggles of the Great Depression. When the widespread droughts that marked the era hit hardest, his grandfather was a wheat farmer.
Costner told Good Housekeeping, "50,000 bushels of wheat would spoil waiting for the price to go up, and it never did. And the Dust Bowl that followed would roll over a generation."
The hard living continued
Good Housekeeping reported that Costner's father, William, then moved to Compton, California, after the ruination of his family's farm but didn't exactly find life there easy either.
Costner said, "He came and worked on the dams and was discriminated against in California because they had taken jobs in the late 20s and 30s. He only had one job and was afraid to lose the job he had because he had seen so many men out of work."
A rugged foundation for Costner
So while the family's situation had improved by the time Costner was born, his father emphasized their humble past, and his strength of character made him Costner's role model.
According to the Hollywood Walk of Fame committee, William would go from being an electrician to an executive at a utility company as Costner grew up.
A way to keep himself centered
According to INSP TV, William's career advancements required the family to move throughout California often, which made it hard for Costner to find a permanent community.
This led him to turn to sports as a means to acclimate to each of his new neighborhoods, and he developed a particular affinity for baseball.
Far from his only passion
Good Housekeeping reported that during his family's stint in San Paulo, Costner also developed a strong love of Westerns and took every chance he could to ride his friend's horse.
He said, "[My friend's] fascination with it didn't run as deep as mine, probably because he'd had it his whole life, and when he didn't want to ride it anymore, I would keep going while he watched or went inside."
A sensible career path
According to the Hollywood Walk of Fame committee, he attended college at California State University, Fullerton, where he pursued and attained a business degree once he graduated.
And while he had plans to put that degree to work, he found an unexpected new passion in his extracurricular pursuits.
From disappointment comes a golden opportunity
Costner played baseball throughout high school, but ScreenRant reported that his baseball dreams faced a serious roadblock after coach Augie Garrido cut him from his college's team.
With one year of college left to go, Costner started taking acting lessons to keep himself busy between classes. However, he caught the acting bug enough by graduation that he considered making that his career.
Sticking to the plan
However, Yahoo! Entertainment reported that he felt it would better align with his family's values to accept a marketing job at the age of 22. While at this firm, he married Cindy Silva, and the couple went on their honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
But on the flight back, Costner would have a life-changing encounter with a man who bought an entire row of seats on the plane for privacy reasons.
He caught Richard Burton on a good day
That passenger was none other than legendary actor Richard Burton, and Costner approached him to express his internal conflict and desire to act. To his surprise, Burton encouraged him to take up the craft.
Costner told Yahoo! Entertainment, "He was famously volatile, he was incredibly talented, and he could have easily said, 'Please go sit back in your seat, that's why I bought all these seats around me, so no one would talk to me.' But he didn't do that, and he easily could have."
The career would last, but the marriage wouldn't
Although Costner was able to follow Burton's advice to a career most actors could only dream of, the moment that inspired his career change would become bittersweet after he and Silva divorced in 1994.
According to People, Silva was supportive of Costner's career but eventually found life with him too complicated when his career rocketed him into stardom. The former couple would reach a reported $80 million settlement after 16 years together.
It wouldn't be the last time
In 2004, Costner entered into another marriage, this time with former handbag designer Christine Baumgartner.
The pair would share 18 years together, and Costner had three of his seven children (two sons named Cayden and Hayes and a daughter named Grace) with Baumgartner. However, it turned out that this relationship would not last forever either.
A complicated situation
According to People, Baumgartner filed for divorce on May 1, 2023, but noted in her filing that the couple had already separated by April 11, 2023. The day after, Costner would respond with his own filing that noted a prenuptial agreement was in effect and that both parties sought joint custody of their three children.
His representative said, "It is with great sadness that circumstances beyond his control have transpired, which have resulted in Mr. Costner having to participate in a dissolution of marriage action."
Irreconcilable differences
Although it's improper to speculate on the reasons for this divorce, Baumgartner cited irreconcilable differences between her and Costner, and the Hollywood star appeared to agree that they can no longer live together.
Because according to People, he then obtained an order to have Baumgartner move out of his $145 million Santa Barbara home by July 31, 2023.
An early setback in a legendary career
But long before Costner was anywhere near the position to afford this estate, he watched what seemed like his big break slip away in a flash.
As The A.V. Club reported, Costner was supposed to have a small but important role in the 1983 hit The Big Chill, only to discover that all of his scenes were cut from the movie.
A career-saving act of mercy
However, The A.V. Club also reported that the movie's writer and director, Lawrence Kasdan was as saddened by Costner's exclusion as he was.
So to make it up to the young actor, Kasdan ensured Costner would be cast in a leading role in the well-received 1985 Western Silverado. It was only the start of things to come.
Costner's momentum was building
Throughout the remainder of the 1980s, Costner had the fortune of being cast in a series of movies that played to his strengths.
For instance, his principled upbringing provided a believable foundation for him to play courageous, incorruptible men of the law. This talent would serve him well as Jim Garrison in JFK, but it would help his star rise even earlier when he secured the lead role as Elliot Ness in the 1987 period drama The Untouchables.
Inspired by his real-life passions
Costner's real-life love of baseball would also match the genuine zeal for the sport shared by his characters in the back-to-back trio of films he starred in that ended with 1989's Chasing Dreams.
This informal trilogy also included some of his most beloved and famous roles, as he would play minor leaguer Crash Davis in Bull Durham and baseball prophet Ray Kinsella in Field Of Dreams.
Costner's biggest gamble
As Variety reported,1990 would see Costner make his directorial debut with Dances with Wolves. It was a trial by fire that saw him put a concerning amount of his own money into the production.
But while he told the outlet that he had to postpone shooting the epic Western, his pledge to fulfill his promise to star in and direct the film would cost him money in multiple ways.
Passing on his biggest payday
Not only did Costner sacrifice his own funds to see the project through, but his promise to complete Dances With Wolves also cost him a lucrative opportunity to star in The Hunt For Red October.
Costner told Variety, "It caused me a lot of pain because there was more money offered on Hunt for Red October than I had ever seen in my life. So I was doing the dumb thing. I was putting up my money and leaving behind the biggest check I had ever seen."
They were sure of Costner's downfall
While Costner's peers in Hollywood misunderstood his motivations for making Dances With Wolves, they were sure that the ambitious project would turn out to be his fatal folly. And as Costner described to Variety, that prospect brought those peers some unexpected glee.
He said, "There was an undertone out there that was ugly. It was 'Kevin's Gate,’ like, ‘What’s he doing out there? This movie is a disaster.’ I didn’t know where that had come from."
But improbably, Dances With Wolves worked
However, Costner would be vindicated at the following year's Oscars when Dances with Wolves won seven Academy Awards, thereby creating the appropriate buzz to ensure the movie's eventual success. But for Costner, these results prompted a celebration for far more immediate and critical reasons than prestige.
Costner said, "For me, it was like, 'I got my money back! I got my house back!'"
More success to come
With this success secured, Costner's momentum throughout the early '90s led him to a series of successful projects, including Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and The Bodyguard.
Curiously, both of these films would also spawn massive soundtrack hits in the respective forms of Bryan Adam's "Everything I Do, I Do It For You" and Whitney Houston's unstoppable cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You."
Political intrigue
This banner period for Costner also saw the first of his political forays with the paranoia-inducing thriller JFK, which saw Costner play New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison as he sought to uncover the truth behind the Kennedy assassination.
Although Costner's future political films wouldn't prove anywhere near as controversial, they were nonetheless revealing about how he sees America.
An even-handed view
Although Costner is a firm believer in America's founding principles, he told Variety that its grandest ideas and potential for greatness are harder to realize than ever in the country's current political system.
He said, "We are everything that's great, and we are everything that’s human. And our humanness and our level of selfishness is overtaking our chance to be great."
A disastrous flop
But if it seemed as though Costner's hot streak during the '90s would never end, there was one ambitious but ultimately career-damaging project that all but brought his time as a box office dynamo to a close.
And while Forbes noted that 1995's Waterworld actually broke even by making $264 million worldwide, its bloated $175 million budget ensured the "Mad Max on water" film could never be the smash hit Hollywood was expecting. As such, Costner never helmed a blockbuster movie that big again.
A return to the director's chair doesn't help
Faced with this shaky reception, Costner doubled down on Waterworld's post-apocalyptic themes with his second directorial project, The Postman. And as with Dances With Wolves, part of the film's $85 million production budget came from his own pockets.
However, Collider noted that the gambit didn't pay off twice. Lambasted as an over-long exercise in ego by critics, The Postman would only earn back $20 million at the box office.
The third time was the charm
While Costner's career sustained some damage during the mid-'90s, he was able to secure enough roles in high-profile dramas like Thirteen Days, Man Of Steel, and Hidden Figures that it was never truly over.
Costner was also able to recover as a director. Collider reported that his 2003 Western Open Range eclipsed a 300% profit from its $20 million budget.
One of his biggest hits ever
But while Costner had an enviable number of smash hits in his early career, one of its biggest has improbably come in far more recent years.
Not only has Yellowstone proved to be the Paramount Network's biggest hit ever, but Good Housekeeping reported that it spent multiple years as the biggest hit on cable TV in general.
Costner's personal inspiration
And much as he has done throughout the many Westerns that marked his career, Costner took inspiration from his father's toughness to get into character as John Dutton. According to Good Housekeeping, he even used his father's old .30-30 rifle during the production.
Costner said, "He was a fighter; he could fight. And he taught me in a way that was designed to win."
When the cameras turn off
But between his big projects, the role Costner focuses on the most is his role as a father. But while he mentioned that parenthood is one of his greatest joys in life, he still wouldn't say he knows everything about it even after having seven children.
He told People, "You've got to get down on the ground and play with them. And you teach them to be independent — and the sad part about that is they become that. I'm like any other parent: I'm trying to figure it out."
