Kevin Costner ‘never’ thought he’d make it in Hollywood, had to see ‘everything that somebody had turned down’

Kevin Coster is opening up about the early days of his career, and his struggle to break through.

During a recent interview on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Costner recalled “feeling that I was never going to make it,” when he was working as a stage manager at Raleigh Station while struggling to make it as an actor.

“Once I got through the door, I kind of went pretty fast,” he said on the podcast. “It wasn’t Tom Cruise sliding across the floor at 18. It was for me at 27, 28. I was a stage manager at Raleigh, working for $3.25 and Richard Gere and Mel Gibson and Nicolas Cage and Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn. At a certain point, [I thought] maybe I wasn’t going to get the part.”

After a while, Costner explained he came to the realization that actors can only make so many movies in a year, and he “need[ed] to see everything that somebody had turned down.”

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While his agent couldn’t understand what the “Yellowstone” star was thinking, Costner said he wanted to know if another actor “walked past something great,” and was committed to “chas[ing] that idea.”

“Actors all want to have agents, but you kind of realize that you get 90% of the money, maybe you’re supposed to do 90% of the work,” he said.

Although Costner’s scenes were cut from the final edit, he credits his role in 1983’s “The Big Chill” with changing his life. Costner explained he knew when he got the part “I was with the right people,” noting: “I wasn’t in the movie, but I realized that wasn’t going to be my last movie.”

Soon after, he starred in the Western “Silverado,” which became his big breakthrough in the industry.

Costner’s big break came when he was cast in the western “Silverado.” (Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

“I was prepared to play the laconic Scott Glen role, Peyton, who Kevin Klein played, because I knew this era. It was already my thing. So I thought I already knew how to do the minimalist. I got the guy who was raging and climbing like a monkey and picking fights, and I thought I wasn’t prepared to play him at first,” he said. “I knew how to do this other thing. This guy was as big as the horizon, so that’s how I ended up trying to play him, which was to play to the horizon.”

Following the success of “Silverado,” Orion Studios presented Costner with a number of movies they wanted him to do next, and he turned them all down. He explained wanting his “career to be about something at some point,” and said he didn’t feel like any of those movies were a good “fit for [him.]”

After he turned down their ideas, they asked him what movie he wanted to make, and he chose, “Finish with Engines.”

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“All this back work I had been doing about who’s turning down what…constantly reading on my own, I found this movie called ‘Finish with Engines,’” he explained. “I said I read the script, I’d do this. It was at Warner Brothers. It was in turn around, so they said, ‘Okay we’ll do that with you,’ and there was no way out. They changed the title, but I knew how it read. It matched up with a sensibility that I had. So after that, then ‘The Untouchables’ happened.”

Costner told the studio he wanted to make “No Way Out” after he read the script. (Orion/Getty Images)

The movie ended up being called “No Way Out,” and also starred Gene Hackman. The film was a big success, earning more than double its budget at the global box office. He then went on to star in “Bull Durham,” “Field of Dreams,” “The Bodyguard” and “Dances with Wolves,” which he also directed. The film won him two Academy Awards, one for best director and the other for best picture.

Coster has starred in many successful projects since, most recently starring in Paramount Network’s popular show, “Yellowstone.” While on the podcast, he revealed he initially only agreed to three seasons on the show, but ultimately ended up staying for all five seasons.

“What happened is, I just believed in the world. I knew it was a soap opera. I knew we should be in jail,” he said. “We’ve all killed people there. And so you throw logic out the window right? But he [creator Taylor Sheridan] has a great ear, and he just wrote that stuff really authentically, and it was good fun. And he wrote my part especially well…so listen, I had a lot of fun with it.”

The actor has since departed from “Yellowstone,” and is focused on directing and acting in “Horizon: An American Saga.” The first two films will be released on June 28 and August 16 respectively, with production already underway on chapters three and four.

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Most recently, Costner starred in the Paramount show “Yellowstone.” (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

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