Kevin Costner was born on 18th January 1955 in Lynwood, California, USA . He was the son of ditch-digger in Southern California. He spent his teenage years and pre-actor adulthood in Orange County, 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.
Costner decided to make his career in films and made his film debut in 1974 in theultra-cheapie Sizzle Beach USA. No matter. When Costner seriously decided to take up acting, he went the usual theatre-workshop, multiple-audition route. Casting directors saw potential, but weren't quite sure how to use Costner; besides, the novice actor had a bad habit of speaking up if something bothered him on the set. That may be why his Big-Studio debut in Night Shift (1982) consisted of little more than background decoration and the subsequent Frances (1982) featured Costner as an off stage voice. Director Lawrence Kasdan liked Costner enough to cast him in the important role of the suicide victim who motivated the plot of The Big Chill (1983),but when the film was released, all we saw of Costner were his dress suit and necktie as the undertaker prepared him for burial during the opening credits. Two years later, a guilt-ridden Lawrence Kasdan chose Costner for a major part as a hell-raising gunfighter in the ''retro'' Western Silverado(1985) - and this time he was on camera for virtually theentire film.
Costner's big breakthrough came with a brace of baseball films, released within months of one another: in BullDurham (1988), the actor was taciturn minor-league ballplayer Crash Davis, and in Field of Dreams he wasRay Kinsella, a farmer who constructed a baseballdiamond in his Iowa cornfield when The Voice said ''If youbuild it, he will come.'' His Hollywood clout amplified by the combined box-office success of these films enabledCostner to make his directing debut. With a minusculebudget of $18 million, Costner went off to the Black Hills ofSouth Dakota to film the first Western Epic that Hollywood had seen in years, a revisionist look at Indian-White relationships titled Dances With Wolves (1990). Detractors had a field day with this supposedly foredoomed project, labeling the film''Costner's Folly'' and ''Kevin's Gate.'' But he who laughs last...Dances with Wolveswas not only one of 1990's biggest moneymakers but also that year's Academy Award-winning film; additionally, Costner copped an Oscar as Best Director.
A curious costume epic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)followed, with Costner as the world's first Oklahoma-accented Robin Hood; this, too, made money, though it seriouslystrained Costner's longtime friendship with the film's director,the notoriously erratic Kevin Reynolds. The Bodyguard (1992),an improbable concoction which teamed Costner with WhitneyHouston, did so well at the box-office that it seemed the actor could do no wrong. But A Perfect World (1993), directed byClint Eastwood and casting Costner against type as ahalf-psycho, half-benign prison escapee, was a major disappointment, even though Costner came through withone of his best performances. Unfortunately, Costnerfollowed Perfect World with another cast-against-typefailure, the 1994 sagebrush dud Wyatt Earp, which proved that even director Lawrence Kasdan can have his off days. Costner's most recent film Waterworld received anenormous amount of negative publicity prior to openingbecause it was way over budget and schedule, however, itopened to good critical reviews and so far, has been enjoying box office success.
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