Word: hollywood
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Both Bull Durham and Field of Dreams echo with the American and Hollywood past. They blend hip showmanship and a vigorous Saturday-matinee innocence. But they work for an audience because Kevin Costner is in them. Virtually unknown three years ago, he is one of the few actors people will consistently line up to see. Men like him, women love him; when he walks into a room or a movie, the wistful lust of female fans sticks to him like decals. His name above the title guarantees quality; each of his hit movies is honorable and ambitious. And each gains...
...writer-director of Field of Dreams. "You can't force him to do something that's false," says Robinson. "He marches to his own Walkman." Or maybe to his own Victrola. For Costner is both a harbinger of the postimperial American male and a throwback to heroes of Hollywood's grandest days...
...star in Hollywood is to be pegged as the reincarnation of some old star, and Costner watchers have their candidates. "Kevin fulfills many of the same ideals that a Jimmy Stewart or a Gary Cooper did for their generation: the little guy against the system, the pure guy vs. evil, the strong man in a time of trouble," says Tom Pollock, chairman of the MCA Motion Picture Group. "It's hard to think of any other leading man in his 30s who can play this variety of roles -- action hero, romantic lead and family...
Here he is plastering rouge on the Old Hollywood corpse. In the heyday of the studio system, few stars were given the chance of controlling their cinematic fate. Lawrence Kasdan, who directed Costner in The Big Chill (where , his substantial role was cut to a few cameo shots as a corpse) and Silverado, compares the actor with Steve McQueen. "Like McQueen," Kasdan notes, "Kevin has a real sense of what he can do. He has always known what's really important for him, rather than what others think is important...
Costner knew how to project and protect himself -- knew acutely who Kevin Costner was -- long before anyone in Hollywood cared. "He had total self- confidence from the beginning," says J.J. Harris, his agent from 1984 until this year. "I'm sure he's had it forever. He's a bigger-than-life person whose presence fills a room, though not in an ostentatious way." Yet he was often willing to torpedo his career to make a point. In Frances, one of his first movies, he risked not getting a Screen Actors Guild card when he balked at saying what...