Kevin Michael Costner was born in Lynnwood, California. He was the third of the three boys born to William and Sharon Costner. Tragically, their second son, Mark, who was born on January 17, 1953, died the very next day. Two years later, the day of Mark’s death, on January 18 1955, Kevin was born. William Costner who called "Bill" by his friends, worked as a lineman for Southern California Edison, a utility company. His wife Sharon worked for the State Welfare Department. Kevin spent his early years in Compton, California, a working class neighborhood. Though the family was not well off, Kevin had a happy childhood. His family was a close and loving one. As his brother Dan remembers it : "Our father always found time to throw the ball. I can picture our dad coming home from work in his blue jeans and his blue denim shirt after 10 hours of climbing poles, yet he would find time in the back yard to go into a catcher’s squat and take the pitches from first me, and a few years later, Kevin."
As a boy, Kevin played with the Little League team his father coached. Bill Costner himself had been a top athlete in school, playing football, baseball, and basketball (The early scenes in For Love of the Game featuring Billy Chapel playing baseball as a child are actually old home movies of Kevin).
Sharon Costner raised her boys to be "outdoor boys" and Kevin has fond recollections of early morning fishing trips with his father, of getting a BB gun at age five and learning how to shoot, of fashioning his own bows and arrows. His father instilled in him to do his best along with loyalty and friendship, sharing, and being fair. Sharon encouraged him to write poetry and join the school choir hoping to break the wall he had built around himself from the constant shifting to different schools because of his father’s job.
Bill Costner’s job required him to move regularly, which caused Kevin to feel like an army kid, always being "that new boy" in school. The family rarely lasted long enough in one place for Kevin to make a friend; this made him a daydreamer.
Kevin also dreamed of becoming a baseball player. Although the school coach kept telling him that at 5’ 2" he was too short to ‘make it’ in the baseball team. However, Kevin went on to become a star athlete, and even had a late growth spurt by which his height eventually increased to 6’ 1". At the age of 18, he built his own canoe and paddled his way down the rivers that Lewis and Clark followed to the Pacific. "I was a rough and tumble type–of kid" he says. But he did develop an early passion for movies. "I can remember watching How the West was Won, and certain moments made me tingle … I believe in the magic of movies."
Kevin studied at California State University at Fullerton. During his senior year as a marketing and finance major, he auditioned – unsuccessfully – for a school production of Rumpelstiltskin. Displaying a resilience that would become a necessary characteristic later on in his career. Kevin joined a community theater group and almost immediately he was hooked on to acting.
Kevin graduated from the University in 1978 with an honors degree in business studies and married Cindy Silva, his childhood sweetheart. Kevin was not happy with the career choice he had made; he wanted to be an actor. But he did not want to let his father down when he finished college. Bill Costner expected his sons to do a stable ‘9 to 5’ job. Kevin knew, something "just did not feel right" in his new life. He could not imagine being tied down with people telling him what to do. He knew there was more to life. Drama had always interested him though there never were any plays in the school that he had willingly attended. But he could look inward and see that there was something, a drive, and a need to be someone completely different than what was expected of him. Kevin could always read people, see the humor in things and life. This 22-year-old lad was not content.
Meeting Richard Burton
Two weeks into a marketing job, which he already hated, Costner was on the brink of making the decision to change his course of life. All he needed was a little push, and he got it. He and his wife Cindy had decided to take a little "late" honeymoon, which they spent in Mexico.
On their return flight, they learned that Richard Burton was flying with them on the same plane. Costner and his wife had talked a lot about the possible pitfalls of becoming an actor, and he realized that Richard Burton, as a veteran actor, was exactly the type of person whose advice he should take. "Richard was up in first class, I got up the courage to walk up there and speak to him" Costner recalls. He told Burton that considering a tumultuous life such as his had been, was it possible to be a good man and still remain in the acting profession?
Burton warned him that it would not be easy and that celebrity only gets worse for actors, but that it was possible to be a good man despite everything. "It was Burton’s encouragement that tipped the scales for me" says Costner.
Costner quit his job and decided to move to Hollywood to pursue a career in acting. Often, an actor has to struggle a lot in the initial phase of his career. To pay the odd bills and the rent, he drove a delivery truck, worked on a deep sea fishing boat, and also worked as a tour guide on a bus showing tourists, the homes of Hollywood stars in Beverly Hills and other similar places. All the while, he used to take night classes for acting.
He was down to his last 20-dollar bill when his acting coach, wanting to lend a helping hand, secured him a role for the soft-porn, low-budget film Sizzle Beach, USA. Costner later regretted having worked in this movie. (He regretted it even more, when the video movie was adopted for the cinema screen and released in theaters in 1986). After seeing the finished product, he vowed never to work in such movies.
He decided to go full force into finding a suitable role for himself. He went about it the usual route struggling actors take, the usual theater-workshop and multiple auditioning. Casting directors saw potential in the young and determined actor, but were not quite sure how to use Costner. Besides, the novice actor had a habit of speaking up if something bothered him on the set, which angered the studio officials. His boldness and frankness may be the reasons why his Big-Studio debut in Night Shift consisted of little more than background decoration and even Frances featured Costner as an offstage voice.
But he was noticeable enough to director Lawrence Kasdan who liked Costner enough to cast him in a role in The Big Chill, a film about a group of friends who get together when one member of their group commits a suicide. Costner’s role was of the one who commits suicide. When the movie was released, the only part where Costner appeared was the opening credits, where he can be seen only as a corpse in a dress suit and necktie. A 15-minute long "flashback", where Costner could be seen as an animated individual, had been edited. Kevin was quite distraught with the result. Kevin became a kind of inside joke in Hollywood. But fortunately, Lawrence Kasdan, admitting to himself that he had not done justice to the talented young actor, chose Costner for a major role in the Western Silverado, in 1985, in which Costner played a batty gunfighter with a roving eye for the ladies. Although the film featured stars like Kevin Kline and Danny Glover, Costner won many fans although he was the least known
Kevin Costner, American actor, director and producer, was born in Los Angeles, California. He became a sex symbol as well as an all-American hero with his baseball movies like Field of Dreams and Bull Durham.
Costner landed a number of film parts in the early 1980s. After a near miss at fame with a role that was edited out in the popular motion picture The Big Chill, his lead role of a gunfighter in Silverado established him as a leading actor.
Dances with Wolves, an early representation of White-Indian relationships, won seven Academy Awards. He has also received critical acclaim for JFK and the more recent Thirteen Days.
A fierce environmentalist, his company Costner Industries develops products to protect the environment, and he himself is in favor of total nuclear disarmament.
He continues to produce, direct, and act in movies, taking a unique approach that is admired and criticized equally.
1955 Kevin Costner was born.
1963 Fell in love with movies after seeing John Ford’s How The West Was Won.
1978 Graduated from California State University and married Cindy Silva.
1983 Landed his first major role in The Big Chill.
1985 Shot to stardom with the movie Silverado.
1987 Worked in a landmark movie: The Untouchables.
1988 Established himself as a sex symbol with No Way Out and Bull Durham.
1989 Made his baseball link stronger with Field Of Dreams.
1990 His smash-hit directorial debut : Dances with Wolves.
1991 Earned critical praise for JFK.
1992 Starred in the smash hit The Bodyguard with Whitney Houston.
1993 A Perfect World, co-starring Clint Eastwood, was released.
1994 He divorced Cindy Silva, his wife of 16 years.
1995 Waterworld, his 200-million dollar movie was released.
1996 He returned to his sex symbol image with Tin Cup.
1997 The year of his epic flop: The Postman.
1999 Returned after two years with sentimental movies like Message in a Bottle and For Love of The Game.
2000 Thirteen Days released.
2001 Dragonfly and 3000 Miles to Graceland are released.
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Failure does not kill you … it increases your desire to make something happen.
I leave my life to opportunity, so I don’t see it as a nine-inning game.
When you respect someone they only have to say one or two lines to make you remember who you are.
I’m mixed up about some things in my life, but I am not mixed up about how to approach my work.
I make my films for men, from a man’s point of view and try to have great women characters in them always.
All of us have feet of clay … all of us have things that under a harsh light we would not want revealed.
I hope that people realize the (nuclear) threat is still there – unless we are so numb that we are under some illusion that we are safe.
A good president, a good leader, is not always the smartest person in the room.
If you don’t understand your limitations, you won’t achieve much in your life.
We are going to walk through this world only once and only once, and our legacy will be our children. They will walk how you walk, and they will see your bravery or your timidity.
I have never asked God to fight my fights. I just want him to make the playing field fair … as it sometimes has not been.
Costner has been in two different movies about John F. Kennedy: JFK (1991) and Thirteen Days (2000)... Costner and his brother operate a casino, the Midnight Star, in Deadwood, South Dakota... Costner's scenes as the suicidal chum in The Big Chill (1983) were cut from the movie before its release... Costner wed his longtime girlfriend, Christine Baumgartner, on 25 September 2004. Costner was 49, Baumgartner 30. It was Baumgartner's first marriage; Costner was married to the former Cindy Silva from 1978-94.
