Kevin Coster talks about the early days of his career and the struggles he faced to achieve success.
During a recent interview on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Costner recalled that while he was working as a stage manager at Raleigh Station while struggling to make it as an actor, “I felt like I’d never make it.”
“Once I walked through the door, I moved pretty fast,” he said on the podcast. “It’s not like 18-year-old Tom Cruise sliding across the floor. It was like that for me when I was 27, 28. I was a stage manager in the Raleigh, working for $3.25, and I had Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Nicolas Cage, Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn. At one point, [I thought] Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten the part.”
Costner later said that actors can only do a limited number of films a year, and[ed] To see all the things someone turned down.”
Costner began to think he would never make it in Hollywood. (Getty Images)
Kevin Costner brings new ‘Love’ movie to ‘Horizon’ set as third Western in production
Though the agent couldn’t figure out what the “Yellowstone” star had in mind, Costner said he wanted to know if other actors had “passed on something great” and committed to “chasing after them.”[ing] That’s the idea.”
“Every actor wants an agent, but because the agent gets 90 percent of the money, they might as well do 90 percent of the work,” he said.
Although Costner’s scenes were cut from the final edit, he has cited his role in the 1983 film The Big Chill as life-changing. Costner explained that he knew “I was with the right people” when he got the part, saying, “I wasn’t in the movie, but I knew it wasn’t my last movie.”
Soon after, he starred in the western Silverado, which became his big breakthrough in the film industry.
Costner’s big break came when he starred in the western film Silverado. (Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)
“I was prepared to play Peyton, the silent Scott Glenn character that Kevin Kline played, because I knew the era. It was already my forte, so I thought I already knew how to do the minimalist thing. I wasn’t prepared to play a raging, ape-climbing, fight-loving guy at first,” he said. “I knew the other way around. This guy was as big as the horizon, so I ended up playing him in a way that was up to the horizon.”
Following the success of Silverado, Orion Studios offered Costner several next films to star in, but he turned them all down, explaining that he wanted “a career that would somehow involve something at some point,” and that he felt none of the films were “right for me.” [him.]”
After he turned down their idea, they asked him what film he wanted to make, and he chose Ends with an Engine.
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“I kept looking at who was turning down what… I kept reading on my own and I came across this movie called Finish with Engines,” he explained. “I read the script and I said this is what I want to do. It was at Warner Bros., and I was on the waiting list, so they said, ‘OK, let’s do this together,’ and there was no way out. They changed the title, but I knew how to read it. It fit my sensibility, and then The Untouchables was born.”
After reading the script, Costner told the studio he wanted to make No Way Out. (Orion/Getty Images)
The film was eventually named “No Way Out” and also starred Gene Hackman. The film was a huge success, grossing more than twice its budget at the box office worldwide. Gene went on to star in “Bull Durham,” “Field of Dreams,” “The Bodyguard,” and “Dances with Wolves,” which he also directed. For this film, Gene won two Academy Awards, one for Best Director and one for Best Picture.
Coster has since starred in a number of successful projects, most recently in the hit Paramount Network show Yellowstone. During the podcast, he revealed that he initially agreed to only star in the show for three seasons, but ended up staying for all five.
“What happened is, I just believed the world. I knew it was a soap opera. I knew we should be in prison,” he said. “We all killed people there, so you throw logic out the window, right? But he [creator Taylor Sheridan] It was a lot of fun because he has a great ear and he wrote it really authentically, and he wrote my part really well… So, listen, it was a lot of fun.”
The actor has since left Yellowstone to focus on directing and starring in Horizon: An American Saga. The first two films were released on June 28 and August 16, respectively, with chapters three and four already in production.
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Costner most recently starred in the Paramount show “Yellowstone.” (Axel/Bauer Griffin/FilmMagic)
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