Kevin Costner

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Kevin Michael Costner (born on January 18, 1955) is an Oscar winning American film actor and director who has often produced his own films. During his career Costner's films have grossed over $1.3 billion dollars.

Contents

1 Biography
2 Success
3 Personal Life
4 Trivia
5 Filmography
6 External links

Biography

Costner was born in Lynwood, California, the youngest of the three sons of William Costner (an electrician of German and 1/4 Native American descent) and Sharon Tedrick (of Irish descent). He spent his teenage years and pre-actor adulthood in Orange County, California, attending Mt. Whitney High School in the baseball town of Visalia, California, graduating from Villa Park High School in Villa Park, California in 1973, and earning a B.A. in business from California State University, Fullerton in 1978, where he was a member of the Delta Chi Fraternity. He became interested in acting while still in college, and began taking acting lessons five nights a week. Costner later worked briefly with a California marketing firm. During a chance encounter with actor Richard Burton, who struck up a conversation with him, Burton advised the young man that if he wanted to pursue acting, he should give everything up completely and go after it with both hands. Costner married a Portuguese-American by the name of Cindy Silva. With his wife behind him, Costner worked on fishing boats and as a truck driver, and gave tours of stars' Hollywood homes to support the two while he made the audition rounds.

Success

Costner's most popular success was the epic Dances With Wolves. He directed and starred in the film and served as one of two producers. The film was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won seven, including two for him personally (Best Picture and Best Director). Costner followed this with , the Oliver Stone-directed JFK and The Bodyguard, all of which provided huge box office takings or critical acclaim. Some of his subsequent film efforts have been criticized for being too long and overly serious, and for squandering financial resources. He also took the title role in the biopic Wyatt Earp, directed by established collaborator Lawrence Kasdan, which fizzled at the summer 1994 box office. The science-fiction epics Waterworld and The Postman, the latter of which Costner also directed, were both initially considered major disappointments at the box office. However, Waterworld grossed $264 million worldwide from a $175 million budget (according to [IMDB]), despite generally poor reviews. Costner's career revived somewhat in 2001 with Thirteen Days, and Open Range, which he directed and starred in, received high critical acclaim as a Revisionist Western, though it was only a minor success commercially. In 2006, he branched into the music field, performing free concerts for charity. A June, 2006 concert netted almost $100,000 for four Shreveport, LA charities.

Personal Life

Costner has three children with Cindy: Annie (born in 1984), Lily (born in 1986) and Joe (born in 1988). Lily is currently attending college, and Annie graduated from Brown University in 2006. All three of his children with Cindy were educated in part at the Chandler School in Pasadena, California.
Kevin and Cindy divorced in 1994 after 16 years of marriage.
On September 25, 2004, after ten years of being single, Costner married his girlfriend of four years, German-American Christine Baumgartner.

Trivia

Costner was cast in the hit The Big Chill (1983). He filmed several scenes which were planned as flashbacks, but they never made it to the final cut. He was the friend who committed suicide, the event around which the plot of the movie revolves. All that is seen of him are his slashed wrists as the mortician dresses his corpse in the movie's opening scenes. Costner was a friend of director Lawrence Kasdan, who later promised the actor a role in a future project, which became Silverado and became a breakout role for Costner. In return Costner helped to get Kasdan's 1975 script for the The Bodyguard produced.
Costner's height is 6'1". According to Costner, he stood only 5'2" after graduating high school.
Developed the film Air Force One and was set to play the lead role, but ultimately decided to concentrate on finishing The Postman instead. He personally offered the project to Harrison Ford.
Appeared in a commercial for the Apple Lisa in 1983.
Costner was registered as a Republican until the 1996 election, when he changed his registration to Independent. He supported Democratic candidates in the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 Presidential elections.
Costner plays regularly in celebrity golf tournaments, including the annual BMW Pro-Am held each April in Greenville County, South Carolina.
Costner owns the "Midnight Star" casino in Deadwood, SD, which is managed by his brother Dan. The casino, its sports bar "Diamond Lil's", and its restaurant "Jake's" are all named after characters and locations from the movie Silverado. The facility contains posters, costumes, and other memorabilia from Costner's films.
Once worked as a skipper on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland.
Several of Costner's films have included a baseball theme. They include Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and For Love of the Game. Costner has a love for baseball and has stated he loves to play baseball even more than he loves to watch it.
During the opening credits for the film For Love of the Game, the young boy swinging the bat is Costner himself when he was a child.
Costner has included his family members in several of his films including Dances With Wolves (children- Annie, Lily and Joe), Tin Cup (son Joe and parents), For Love of The Game (childhood home movies) and The Postman (Children- Annie, Lily and Joe).

Filmography

Stacy's Knights (1982)
Chasing Dreams (1982)
Night Shift (1982)
Frances (1982)
Table For Five (1983)
The Big Chill (1983) (scenes deleted)
Testament (1983)
The Gunrunner (1984)
Fandango (1985)
Silverado (1985)
American Flyers (1985)
Surfin', U.S.A. (1986)
Shadows Run Black (1986)
The Untouchables (1987)
No Way Out (1987)
Bull Durham (1988)
Field Of Dreams (1989)
Revenge (1990) (actor and executive producer)
Dances With Wolves (1990) (actor, director and producer)
(1991) (documentary)
(1991) (actor, producer)
JFK (1991)
Oliver Stone (1992) (documentary)
(1992) (documentary)
The Bodyguard (1992) (actor, producer)
(1992), episode: The Mission, in which he plays the captain of the plane
A Perfect World (1993)
A Century Of Cinema (1994) (documentary)
Wyatt Earp (1994) (actor, producer)
The War (1994)
Waterworld (1995) (actor, producer, and uncredited director)
Tin Cup (1996)
Sean Connery, An Intimate Portrait (1997) (documentary)
The Postman (1997) (director, producer, and actor)
Message in a Bottle (1999) (actor, producer)
For Love of the Game (1999)
Play It To The Bone (1999) (Cameo)
Thirteen Days (2000) (actor, producer)
3000 Miles to Graceland (2001)
Dragonfly (2002)
Open Range (2003) (actor, director, and producer)
The Upside of Anger (2005)
Rumor Has It (2005)
The Guardian (2006) (currently filming)
Mr. Brooks (2007) (currently filming)
The Tortilla Curtain (2006) (currently in pre-production) (actor, producer)

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External links

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