Kevin Costner: All That Kevin Allows

Having played a supporting part in the no-nukes nightmare movie Testament in 1983, Costner then endured the insult of having his biggish role in the Jon Voight movie Table for Five reduced to the level of "Newlywed Husband." That is the last slight of its kind in Costner's career. Perhaps taking Kasdan's advice more to heart, Costner, Harris, and Nicita began stumping for such prestigious showcase stuff as The Killing Fields and Mask, and when producers offered The Ice Pirates and Grandview, U.S.A. instead, Costner held out.

"The amazing thing about Kevin," recalls casting agent Johanna Ray, "is how everyone talked about him, how he was on top of everyone's list, before anyone really knew who he was. J.J. Harris did a fantastic job for him because there was this incredible mystique."

Indeed. When, for instance, Costner was called to discuss a role in the 1984 sci-fi movie Dreamscape, he and his representatives were apparently offended to learn it was not for the lead, for which Dennis Quaid had already been hired. "He is very, very special to us," a producer recalls being told by Harris and the Morris office, "and we're very carefully guiding his career."

Costner's first major starring role came in 1985 when John Badham cast him in American Flyers, a would-be Dark Victory meets Breaking Away meets Brian's Song. The director, who had helped launch John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and Matthew Broderick in WarGames, said that his would-be star did so much questioning, self-examination, and tinkering--often to the benefit of the material--that "it was almost a relief to get him on the bicycle." Costner never had a prayer in this one. The script was undercooked and he was playing such a walled-up, interior guy, that when this character started to wither away on screen, audiences just didn't care. Moreover, no one in Costner's corner did him the favor of telling him he looked all wrong in that moustache. But the bottom line was that Costner himself didn't have the focus, the heft, to galvanize a way-ward movie. Almost again, darlin.'

Nicita again set Costner up with Lawrence Kasdan, who was hot, for the role of wiggy, flaky Jake, the hotblood in the director's big Western project, Silverado. At the time, Kasdan de-scribed Costner as "untamed... just like a movie star," and said: "I think I wrote [Silverado] for him." But Nicita recalls the director bending over backwards to avoid the appearance of simply handing the role to Costner as a consolation prize for what happened on The Big Chill. "Kevin had to read for the role against the top young actors in L.A.," Nicita asserts. "When it was over, Larry just said: 'Hey, he's great.' "

Although starring amidst such heady, hands-on actors as Kevin Kline, John Cleese, Danny Glover, and Linda Hunt, Costner knew he had the firebrand sexpot role, virtually a certain star-maker. Everyone on the shoot seemed to feel it, too. Costner's time had come. The Untouchables production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein remarked, "I'd seen him jumping in and out of saddles and I'd think, 'He's cute, but Jesus, he must be hard to handle.' But I must tell you: That was acting, that was the character." Another crew member recalls her parents visiting the set and, as she watched in astonishment, her mother "fell totally in love with him. He just bowled her over."

For the first time in Costner's career, he became the target of public scrutiny. Movie sets are notorious incubators for bad behavior for which everyone later forgives themselves. But Costner exhibited at this early point what became characteristic of him--unusual, gentlemanly discretion. He was not only refreshingly professional in his capacity as an actor, he was professional in his personal dealings as well. Silverado crew members, who praise Costner's allegiance to wife and family, recall gossip that sprang up when he spent occasional spare moments between takes chatting with an attractive woman crew member. One day, he reportedly told her, laughingly, that everyone in the crew was accusing them of having an affair. And from that point on, he kept a wary distance from her.

Costner wouldn't give the gossips an inch, but he knew how to give the broader press a mile. When he sauntered up to the mike at Silverado's premiere, he gazed out over the red carpets, searchlights, and hungry paparazzi, and said that he wanted the public to know he wasn't "too cool for all this." He might have been Gary Cooper in Meet John Doe.

The industry buzz had it that Silverado would be huge and Costner would be launched. The expectation was there. The heat was there. But the audiences weren't there. Silverado died at the box office. "I've had this nagging thing," Costner admitted in 1987, "that I'll never be in a hit."

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