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.