Kevin Costner Biography

Kevin Michael Costner was born the son of a ditch-digger in Southern California, his unsettled upbringing apparently making him fall in love with American landscape.

The young Costner wrote poetry, sang in a Baptist choir, excelled at baseball and built his own canoe.

Attending California State University at Fullerton in 1973, Costner married and drifted, but after a meeting with Richard Burton on a plane flight, he decided to pursue an acting career.

Taking his wife to LA, he worked as a truck-driver and tour-guide, seeking acting work. Having appeared in 'Malibu Hot Summer' in 1974, and seeking better work, he took bit-parts, before turning down the lead in 'War Games' for a role in Lawrence Kasdan’s 'The Big Chill'.

When his part was cut, Kasdan cast him again in the Western, 'Silverado', and Costner became a star.

In 'The Untouchables', 'No Way Out' and the baseball films, 'Bull Durham' and 'Ray Kinsella' and 'Field of Dreams', Costner carved out his niche as an upstanding hero.

Convinced by his own moral force, he directed and starred in 'Dances With Wolves' in 1991, which won both Best Picture and Best Director Oscars.

After 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves', Costner starred in Oliver Stone’s 'JFK', and in the hit 'The Bodyguard'. However, playing against type in 'A Perfect World' and 'Wyatt Earp', he found little commercial success.

Costner then embarked upon 'Waterworld', a grotesquely expensive post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure, complete with a Dennis Hopper villain. A huge flop, Costner followed it with the subtle hit 'Tin Cup', before making another huge error in directing and starring in another post-apocalyptic fable, 'The Postman'.

Knocked, Costner retreated to films such as 'For the Love of the Game' and '3000 Miles to Graceland', before revisiting JFK waters with the well-received 'Thirteen Days' Cuban Missile Crisis drama.