Kevin Costner Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

- There was a real problem because a lot of people felt

that that would never get on the radio,

but that's not my problem.

My problem is my movie.

But I said, "Don't be so sure."

The song had a real second life,

a little Dolly Parton song.

[upbeat music]

- [John] Is this heaven?

- No, it's Iowa.

- A good story requires a good script

for it to somehow leap off the page and become a movie.

That little movie had gold dust all over it,

not in the way that I thought it would be a big hit,

whereas gold dust on it in the way it moved me personally.

And I think if I can be moved personally,

I feel like in movie making,

I can find a way to share that on a mass level.

And so when I read "Field of Dreams" on a couch by myself,

the first page was sweet.

Somebody's talking to him in the corn.

Okay, let's keep going.

And it wound its way not to a gunfight, or to a car chase,

or to a big fight.

Its journey took you to a place where you look

and you saw your father,

and it's Biblical for things that go unsaid

between father and son, between mother and daughter,

things we wish we would've said.

And this little movie in the corn got me all the way,

and suddenly, it wasn't a movie anymore, it was truth,

and it was I wish I could have said that in my life.

And he says, "Do you wanna have a catch?"

- Do you wanna have a catch?

[uplifting music]

- I'd like that.

- And I thought movies can be about that.

So if you were looking for the car crash,

if you were looking for the gunfight,

you're gonna walk right by things like "Field of Dreams."

And it's the same way I felt when I read "Bull Durham,"

or when I read "Silverado,"

I felt like I had a giant secret.

- [Voice] If you build it, he will come.

[suspenseful music]

[birds chirping]

- Hey Annie!

Annie, what was that?

- There was an interesting thing 'cause Robin Williams,

bless his heart, there was a moment

when I asked the director, I said,

"You know, Robin Williams is a big star,

as big as you ever wanna get."

So when he picked me to do it, kind of over Robin Williams,

'cause it seems like a natural for Robin Williams,

and he said, "I'm pretty sure

that Robin Williams hears voices in the corn.

I'm kind of sure that you don't.

They're gonna end up believing you, Kevin,

because they're gonna see how it works."

- [Voice] If you build it, he will come.

- All right, that's it, huh?

Who the-

- They might have said "Voice,"

and I'm, like, pulling a piece of corn,

I forget what happened, but it's like,

gee, I had to act like I heard a voice, right?

So I did.

[upbeat music]

- I'd never known a people so eager to laugh,

so devoted to family, so dedicated to each other,

and the only word that came to mind was harmony.

- Well, I asked three pretty prominent directors

to maybe think about directing it,

and all of them had something that they would do different,

something that they didn't agree with in the script.

I won't tell you what the names were,

but I said, "Oh my goodness,

I think I actually need to direct this,"

not because I think I can make it better,

but I think it'll be more what it looks like on paper.

I believe in the written word.

My script is my Bible,

it's a document that's living and breathing.

I can protect it, and that's what I intend to do.

I connected in a much deeper way than I anticipated

as I started that script.

I started to become involved.

I love the people and I love the animals,

and I knew that they were all gonna be casualties

in the end, and that makes for drama.

- Buff?

- Buff, buff.

- Buff? - Buffalo, tatanka.

[Kicking Bird speaking foreign language]

- What allowed for the miscommunication,

what allowed for the danger, what allowed for the confusion,

what allowed for the humor was that they couldn't talk.

The miscommunication led to so much drama,

and occasionally a sense of humor,

which when people couldn't talk

and thought somebody was saying one thing,

you see people have a real desire

and see what happens when they can't speak,

so much bad can come out of that.

[dramatic music]

[gun firing]

Well, I'll tell you what was uncertain was,

were we gonna even be able to find the buffalo?

And we finally did in the middle of South Dakota,

number one, I was so grateful that they even existed,

and then number two, had to negotiate with the rancher,

"Will you let me chase them?"

He was the formerly lieutenant governor of the state,

so he was a pretty evolved guy,

but he said, "You wanna chase my buffalo?"

And I was young, and he finally said,

"Okay, we'll chase them, we'll chase them,"

and that son of a bitch, I love him forever.

He's like 80 years old, he got in his truck,

he got five other trucks, he got a helicopter,

and we started chasing them for six days.

And on the sixth day, all the buffalo finally backed up.

I was waiting to work that day,

they'd all backed up the herd,

and the helicopter came down low

and faced off with this bull,

just the way I'm looking at this camera,

about 10 feet back more,

and they were doing everything to make the buffalo run,

and the buffalo wouldn't run.

And this one bull finally charged the helicopter,

the helicopter lifted up, just missed him.

Roy said, "They're not gonna run anymore."

They were done.

The bull finally said, "Six days is enough."

It was fast, it was scary,

and it was, like you say, it was beautiful.

That's something I'll never forget.

But if you see me going like this,

that means you have to go.

I remember after the first time we chased them,

it didn't work very well.

They told me the buffalo wouldn't run downhill.

You had to run them uphill, which sounded a little bit odd,

but I said, "Okay," to the experts.

We ran them uphill the first time, people were coming.

I could tell how uptight, and everybody was nervous.

They went all over the place.

So now all the writers met on our walk back to the camera,

and I was realizing,

"Gee, we didn't get very much film on this,

and we had 3,500 buffalo."

But as I looked to my left and I looked to my right,

all the Native Americans,

and they were all Native American riders, rodeo riders,

and as we're riding back, and we were together,

we're still far away,

so nobody else knew what we were talking about,

I looked at them, and I looked at them,

and I looked behind me, and I said,

"You didn't shoot any arrows."

And the guy went, "I know,' "And you didn't shoot,

and you didn't shoot,

none of you guys shot any arrows."

What happened was, it was kind of holding on for our life.

No one had ever done it, no one knew what to expect,

so it was just this kind of thing.

After that, they never came back with a full quiver.

The whole rite of passage for them was when we rode back

after reach take, their quiver was empty.

That became something.

But that first one, maybe one guy got one arrow off,

and then was just amazed

at these animals running around him.

It was really something.

I don't think I ever told that story.

It marked me, you know, it marked me in a real way,

not because of its success,

but because people were willing to at least,

you know, see what I was willing to do.

[upbeat music]

- So have you ever liked anybody?

- What do you mean?

- Like me? A girl?

- Yeah, a long time ago.

- Mm, what happened?

Do you mind if I ask?

- Mind if I don't answer?

- The idea, well, who was gonna play Rachel Marron?

There was all, I wanna say, the usual suspects,

but none of them fit, and they were really good actresses.

And I remember seeing Whitney Houston, I thought,

"I'm gonna have her play this."

And what she did for the movie

and what the movie did for her is obvious.

Whitney trusted me really early on,

and I said, "You're gonna need to,"

I said, "But you're not gonna have an entourage.

I don't have one and you're not gonna have one."

I said, "If there's a person that's important to you,

that person can be on the set, but nobody else,"

and she trusted that.

And that's "Bodyguard,"

I don't know how the rest of the career played out

with what the sets were like,

but for me, I said,

"I want you to be able to hear my voice."

It was just about knowing she could trust me,

that my whole intention was for her to look good,

and she desperately wanted to, we all do.

♪ If I ♪

♪ Should stay ♪

- [Interviewer] I read that it was your idea

to have the beginning

of "I will Always Love You" be acapella.

- Yes, when you wanna impress,

you get all the bells and whistles, right?

You get all the bells and whistles,

and the symphony's playing and you can impress.

But think about an apology

that you would wanna say to somebody,

that you would want them to understand

that you really meant every word you were saying to them,

and what if you did it without music?

I don't need music to tell you that I love you,

that I wanna apologize to you,

that you did something for me.

And of course, the music kicked in after,

but it was so much more powerful

for her to start that without music.

There was a real problem because a lot of people felt

that that would never get on the radio.

And I said, "Well that may be, but that's not my problem.

My problem is my movie and that's what I'm taking care of."

But I said, "Don't be so sure."

The song had a real second life,

little Dolly Parton song.

♪ Will always love you ♪

- [Interviewer] Did she teach you to sing anything?

- Did she teach me to sing anything?

No one's gonna sing in front of her.

[upbeat music]

- Can I give you some advice, Casey?

Someday your son's gonna test you.

He's gonna force you to make a decision

that not only determines his future, but your place in it.

I want you to remember me standing here, son,

before you make that decision, because this,

this is a consequence of choosing wrong.

- Well, number one, you have a legacy,

and your legacy is your land and what's come before you.

And then a man wants to protect that

for not only the generations that have come out of respect,

but for things to go forward.

And in a raw place like the country,

where not the whole world is watching you,

it can be abrasive.

How the world operates outside the lines

of his property is one thing.

How it operates on his property will be another thing,

so it's kind of brutal in a lot of ways,

kind of very Biblical.

It's just the way it's gonna be,

and so that's the way that character was drawn.

I wanted to serve the writing that Taylor was doing,

and I found my own way of doing things,

but I can't say like I invented anything.

- Get back before that thing eat somebody.

- It seems friendly.

- It's not, now get back.

- We won't get any closer. [foreign language]

- You see that fence? That's mine.

That fucking fence down there, that's mine too.

Everything this side of that mountain

all the way over to here, mine too.

- I love the scene when the tourists had seen a bear

because it happened.

They saw a bear out actually in the environment,

and I happened to be on my way to something.

I'm in a tuxedo and I happen to also have my gun in the car,

which makes sense.

He, you know, talked about notion of what was his,

I thought that was a very classic scene for me.

I think dealing with some environmentalists

was kind of good fun too.

There's so many scenes that were written so well

in "Yellowstone" for me.

- Don't you bring the net if you're planning on a big one.

[gentle music]

- Why can't we live right here,

like this, all the time?

- [John] You know, I ask myself the same thing, grandson,

every day, every day.

- Well, I think that's one time

when John could be different.

It's about how you teach someone young.

Maybe there's a softer thing to John

about how you explain things.

And certainly, that's part of the job in our life,

what does an older man have to do,

offer a younger man or a boy?

It's a gentleness, it's an inclusiveness,

it's a sense of trying to empower him.

[upbeat music]

- We could lose them in the forest.

- Sherwood Forest is haunted, Master.

- Either we take our chances with the ghosts

or become ghosts ourselves.

[dramatic music]

- It was a real page turner.

I normally don't think I would've wanted to do that,

but it was so physical,

swinging, running, jumping,

Maid Marian on horses.

It was just good American fun.

They came to me, I read it,

I thought it was really good and I wanted to do it.

[arrow whooshing]

Most kids get to shoot a bow and arrow.

In my instance, I had shot bow and arrow, not like archery.

It was just like I tried to kill a lot of things

when I was little, you know, and not like the neighbor's cat

or anything like that,

but would go out into the, I lived in the country,

and I wanted to like provide for my mom, you know?

I saw myself as being that kind of guy.

[sword whooshes]

- Recognize this?

It belonged to your father.

Appropriate, don't you think,

that I now use it to send you to meet him?

- Alan said a really funny thing about me.

He said, "Oh, another American actor

who really likes to fight." [laughs]

When Kevin directed me and him, we were really going at it.

"Another American who likes to fight."

He was a beauty.

Running on the backs of three horses

and then jumping on another one,

I love doing my own stunts, I just love it.

I remember hunting some mushrooms out in the field

with one of my friends, he said, "They're out there,"

and he goes, "Do you wanna go find them?"

This was that day I had a big sword fight

with Alan Rickman that afternoon.

He was the stunt guy playing the little boy,

and he goes, "Hey, there's some magic mushrooms

out in this field, 'cause you want to go look for them?"

I said, "Okay, let's go."

There was an opening scene with those little boys

being chased by a dog in that field.

And so we're out looking for them.

Everybody went to lunch, and he found one,

and then he found another one, and I couldn't find one.

I couldn't find one mushroom.

After about the fifth one he found, I said, "Nick,"

I said, "How are you, how are you,

I'm looking, how are you finding these mushrooms?"

He says, "Well, you have to eat one

and it tells you where the rest of them are."

And I thought, "I'm not eating a mushroom.

We're having a sword fight, Nick.

You've eaten some mushrooms?

'Cause we're gonna be with swords in about an hour."

And he looked at me and went, "Yeah."

I said, "Okay, well, let's keep looking,

but let's not eat anymore mushrooms."

[upbeat music]

- Ha, the sucker teed off in there

like he knew I was gonna throw a fast ball.

- [Crash] He did know. - How?

- I told him

- When it first came to me, they wanted me to play Nuke.

I said, "No, I'm not gonna play Nuke."

I said, "I would rather play Crash."

I felt that I had done the Nuke character in "Silverado,"

the little out of control.

Then I met Ron,

and Ron and I went to the batting cages together.

I did that on purpose for him

because I wanted him to be able to say to any actor

that he was going to hire,

"Well, Kevin went to the hitting cages."

'Cause a lot of people will say they can roller skate.

A lot of people will say they know how to ride a horse.

And a lot of people will say they know how to play baseball.

You don't have to be a great athlete

to see a person who knows how to play,

but Ron captured something so real, minor league baseball,

and he did it without the guy getting there.

That broke with the tradition.

The tradition is, "Oh, they'll call him up

and he'll hit a home run."

No, he never makes it.

The kid makes it.

There was something romantic and golden

and sad and heroic in it,

and Ron understood the romance,

and he did the exact same with "Tin Cup."

Didn't have me win the US Open.

He had me implode.

It resonates with men and women that he was at least true

to his character.

There's a romance in that.

We don't have to win in order to be respected.

We have to stay true to ourselves.

We have to find the relevance in who we are

and not strive to become what's popular.

I mean, everybody wants to be popular, myself included,

but I don't need to lose myself in order to do that.

- Your place or mine?

- Despite my rejection of most Judeo-Christian ethics,

I am, within the framework

of the baseball season, monogamous.

- Susan Sarandon just was, number one, a dream partner,

and become this like long distance friend

where we don't talk,

but there's nothing I don't think I could ask

that Susan wouldn't do for me.

There's nothing that she needs that I wouldn't try for her,

and there's just a silent understanding

that that's the case.

She's the kind of girl that can make every guy think

they have a chance, and nobody has a chance

except what she wants to have happen,

and she's just a total woman.

- We got ourselves a natural disaster.

[uplifting music]

- It almost was a scene that wasn't gonna be in there,

but Ron and I had this relationship

where he'd say, "Okay, try it, do it."

[uplifting music]

So it was late in the night,

and I got all the guys on the field.

Ron goes, "I'll set up the cameras,"

and I laid this thing called Visqueen down,

which is plastic.

And we threw dirt all over the top of it

and we said, "Turn on the sprinklers."

And Ron and I both didn't know what was gonna happen,

and then we just started sliding

from first to second, second to third, to home,

not making it, slipping and falling,

but it is a boys' game.

It's just played at the highest level

by men on the professional circuit,

but it's still a boys' game.

And to slide in the mud,

there's nobody that doesn't wanna do that.

[upbeat music]

- What's the matter, Paden,

you afraid I couldn't get those two behind me?

- I don't want you getting anybody in my place.

[feet shuffling]

- Boom.

- Well that movie was a such a miracle for me.

I was able to work in "The Big Chill."

I was able to watch Lawrence Kasdan work,

and the cast that he assembled on "The Big Chill,"

and I thought to myself I was in the right place.

Regardless that I didn't appear in that movie,

I realized I had landed in my own way.

Being with Kasdan was a big difference maker for me,

regardless of what happened at "Big Chill."

"Silverado" was a thing that he,

you know, allowed me to be in,

and it was a great American character,

a young guy full of juice.

And I'll be perfectly honest,

I was a little disappointed in that role

because Kevin Kline and Scott Glenn

were getting to play the prototype who said very few things,

very laconic, but then got to do the thing.

That was the proto.

Here it was, I had this character

that was just raging against the horizon, if you will.

He was loud and he had a great joy.

- I walked out in the street,

and this fella tries to shoot me in the back.

- You had to kill him?

- No, no, no, I winged him and he dropped his gun.

- You're in here for winging the guy?

- No, not exactly, because, you see,

a friend opened up on me.

- What friend's that?

- It was the one with a shotgun.

- It was certainly the right role for me.

I had planned in my life

that I knew I would do Westerns.

Ask me why, I can't tell you.

I knew I would make them, so I had already in my mind

the kind of characters that I would line up with.

I didn't contemplate the out of control guy.

That was great fun,

and I'm so grateful to have had that opportunity

to make that, and play opposite all the guys

and women in that show.

There was a matinee, like, that Saturday afternoon matinee,

that go-back movie feeling that Western had, it was fun.

It was big fun.

[upbeat music]

- Throw a little harder than usual today.

There's your warning.

- Chap, don't throw it away too early.

[uplifting music]

- Today I'm throwing hard, Gus.

- The movie wasn't gonna happen in Yankee Stadium,

and we already had a crew out there,

and no one knew what to do about it,

but George wasn't gonna let it happen.

It wasn't fair, and it came down to I didn't have no lawyer,

no studio executive.

Our movie was dead in the water.

And somebody said, "Kevin, you need to talk to him."

And I was like, "Where're all the tough guys?

Everybody, what are you talking about?

I have to talk to George."

But he had said "No," it wasn't gonna happen.

We had a contract.

So I call up George.

He's a legendary guy, difficult guy,

and I wasn't certain how I was gonna go about doing that,

but so much was riding on it.

And so I called him up and I said, "Hello, George."

He goes, "Hello, Kev."

And I said, "Hi, George."

He goes, "What do you need, Kev?"

And I said, "Well, George,

it sounds like we can't come to the Yankees stadium."

He goes, "That's right."

And I'm thinking to myself, "Where's my dad?

I need somebody to help me with this.

I don't know what to say to this guy."

I said, "George, but we had a contract."

He goes, "I know that, but I can't let it happen, Kev."

And I said, "All right, George,

you wanna explain that to me? Why?"

He goes, "Well, the Yankees lose."

"The Yankees what?"

"They lose, can't let that happen, Kev."

I said, "George, it's a perfect game.

I pitch a perfect game."

"You don't even get a hit.

Yes, you lose.

Yeah, the Yankees can't lose."

And I thought, "Well, we've just lost the stadium

'cause I'm not gonna change the plot."

So I listened to him.

It was a little bit of silence, and I finally said,

and I use different words than I'm gonna use with you,

I said, "George, what are you talking about?"

You can guess what I filled in.

And he said, "What?"

I said, "What are you talking about?"

I said, "The Yankees don't lose. They win."

Now I'm really lying right here right now

'cause they do lose.

I kick their with a perfect game.

And he goes, "What do you mean they don't lose?"

And I said, I'm tap dancing, thinking,

I said, "You guys win the pennant.

This is a meaningless game.

You guys actually win.

You don't need this game.

In fact, you even bring up minor leaguers."

I'm thinking, "God, I'm just a world class liar here."

And I said, "You win.

In fact, you not only win the pennant, George,

you go on to win the World Series."

He goes, "We do?"

I said, "You do in my story.

Just, we're not gonna see that part."

And he, I don't know what the hell happened,

but he said, "Okay,

but you know what this organization means to me."

I said, "I certainly do.

You win the World Service, George.

I swear to God, you do."

Turns out they did, they won that year.

- [Announcer] And you know, Steve, you get the feeling

that Billy Chapel isn't pitching against lefthanders,

isn't pitching against pinch hitters,

he isn't pitching against the Yankees.

He's pitching against time.

- There was a lot of things going on.

My mom and dad were still alive, they watched me.

My mom and dad went to every little league game

I ever played.

They went and watched me direct the whole movie

"Dances with Wolves,"

up on a mountain in a Winnebago,

and my mom sat in a lawn chair.

She said they wouldn't bother me.

She'd wave at me every morning.

I would go out to direct, and I would walk up

to all the rest of the guys and I'd see my mom waving at me,

and I'd go, and I'd go direct the movie.

My whole life was little league for my parents.

And so "For the Love of the Game,"

they were in the stands and watched me shoot that movie.

- [Interviewer] What is it about baseball

- That connects with me?

I don't know.

You know, people argue that you shouldn't make one baseball.

I made three of 'em.

I mean, I made "Bull Durham"

and "Field of Dreams" back to back.

But they didn't seem strictly about baseball.

They separated themselves.

That's why I could do it.

"Field of Dreams" was not a story

I was gonna let pass me by.

And conventional wisdom, don't do a second baseball movie,

I wasn't gonna let "Bull Durham" pass me by,

because it was everything a movie should be.

And so I didn't do another baseball movie

and would never do another one,

but then I read "For the Love of the Game,"

and I'm not gonna let it pass me by.

When I sense something

and I feel like I can connect with an audience,

I don't wanna let it pass me by.

[upbeat music]

- Come out here, Capone, you wanna fight?

You wanna fight, you and me right here?

That's it, come on!

What's the matter, you afraid to come out

from behind your men?

You afraid to stand up for yourself?

- You wanna do it now? You wanna do it right now?

- Yeah, come on, you can son of a bitch.

- "Untouchables" was a really well written script.

David Mamet had written really a very perfect script,

and so I wanted to be a part of it.

Brian de Palma directed it, and of course,

Sean Connery was in it,