“What is the deal with this ‘Sexiest Man in Hollywood’ stuff? I honestly just don’t get it, although I don’t want to bitch about it too much,” sighs Kevin Costner. “I mean, they could say far worse things about me, right?”
Sitting in his production office, casually clad in jeans and a black shirt (he’s already kicked off his shoes) and wearing a two-day stubble, the hottest actor in Hollywood seems genuinely puzzled by all the commotion in the wake of such hits as The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves and now Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Perhaps hearing the earnestness in his own question, Kevin pauses, and his handsome face cracks into the kind of wide, boyish grin that says he’s suddenly made sense of such extravagant claims. But the man behind the face isn’t giving in that easily. “Calling me ‘The Sexiest Man in Hollywood’ is just nonsense,” he complains. “It’s just not true, and it gets in the way of everything I’m trying to do as an actor.”
He’s only half-right, of course. His sex appeal fairly sizzles in all his films, particularly in an overwrought, torrid melodrama like Revenge, and even, at the other extreme, in a gentle fable like Field of Dreams. And let’s not forget that famous seduction scene with Sean Young in the back of the limo in No Way Out.
Kevin almost winces at the memory. “I’ll never live that scene down, will I?” he asks. “Everyone tells me how hot it was, but the truth is, I was really uncomfortable doing it. Even if they don’t remember anything else about the film, people always ask about that scene. I sometimes feel it almost got in the way of the rest of the movie.”
But far from detracting, Kevin’s sex appeal and erotic scenes only serve to underscore his abundant natural charisma and good looks. As The Untouchables director Brian De Palma puts it, “Kevin is an immensely likable actor, and audiences pick up on the quality immediately. They want to see more of him.”
Be that as it may, the 37-year-old actor has never rested on the laurels of his charm and handsome face. After the unexpected success of one baseball movie, Bull Durham, perhaps only Kevin could have made another, Field of Dreams, and seen audiences come back—in droves. The sentimental, gentle fantasy about a simple Iowa farmer who hears a voice telling him to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield was widely dismissed at the time of its 1989 release as a Field of Corn.
Photography: Gwendolen Cates/Visages.
But Field of Dreams went on to hit a home run at the box office by scoring over $100 million, is already being reassessed for the unusual (given Hollywood’s current obsession with cartoon-styled blockbusters) picture it is—a Capraesque fable that eschews special effects in favor of old-fashioned, seductive magic.
It is also a film that firmly established Kevin as the leading man par excellence of his generation, an actor unafraid to follow up his early successes in violent thrillers such as The Untouchables and No Way Out with two warm-hearted baseball movies, and his three-hour epic, Dances with Wolves.
It was here that the actor took on his biggest challenge to date. “Everyone told me it couldn’t be done,” he says of his Academy Award-winning directorial debut. “We shot mainly on location in very difficult conditions, and it was harder than I expected. It’s not exactly the most commercial project I could have picked, either.”
But then the actor has always listened to his own inner voice and marched to the beat of his own drummer. Growing up in middle-class Compton, CA, with an older brother, Dan (who would later be given hero recognition by the Marines, and now oversees the actor’s business interests), Kevin appears to have been a sensitive kid who buried his dreams under the easygoing nonchalance of a Southern California jock.
“At school I was your typical teenager, into sports and hanging out with the guys,” he recalls. “I’d drink beer and get into fights rather than read Shakespeare. But I always had this feeling deep down inside about acting. It just took some time to realize it.”
As for women, it seems that today’s heartthrob was a slow starter in that department, as well. “I never really dated much when I was in high school,” he admits. “I was real short then, only about 5’2” tall, and it always bothered me. I think I had just one date, at the senior prom. That was it, period!”
The actor, who subsequently shot up to 6’1,” says that he felt much more comfortable “just picking up girls. I always remembered what my mom told me, that ‘it’s very easy to fall in love with a girl, but never date a girl you wouldn’t consider marrying.’ And that advice stuck with me, I guess.”
In 1975, Kevin put it to the test as he started dating Disneyland’s Snow White, Cindy Silva. “To be honest, she was the first woman I seriously dated, and I knew she was different right away,” he says. “I thought she was so beautiful and she had this glow about her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her…”
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