Tragic Details About Kevin Costner's Life

Born in 1955 in Lynwood, California, and raised in Compton, Kevin Costner skyrocketed to fame in the late '80s with "The Untouchables" (1987) and "Bull Durham" (1988) and cemented his status as one of Hollywood's rugged leading men: Strong, masculine roles with a cowboy style have been his signature trait for decades. His crowning achievement came in 1991 when the film "Dances with Wolves," which he directed and starred in, won two Academy Awards, Best Picture and Best Director. It even won against fan-favorite and critically acclaimed films, including Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" – not bad for a guy who once got his scenes cut from The Big Chill!

However, it didn't always seem like Costner was destined for Hollywood stardom. Before he became a household name, he worked regular jobs to make ends meet. In Live With Kelly and Mark, he explained the details of his gigs in the early days: "I had blue-collar jobs. I worked fishing boats, I drove trucks ... I sought out adventure wherever I could," he said. Maybe his blue-collar background helped shape his on-screen persona as an everyman hero. He also used to work as a tour guide in Hollywood and was a stage manager for three years at Raleigh Studio. "I graduated college, and while most of my friends were kind of making the upward trend, my first job was $3.25 an hour, and I was so glad to have it," he recalled. Decades later, the actor was earning $1.3 million per episode for the TV show "Yellowstone." 

Kevin Costner described the year 1994 as the hardest one in his life. He and his wife of 16 years, Cindy Silva, called it quits in a long and messy divorce. "l am no longer with Cindy, my partner since childhood," the "Yellowstone" star told the Seattle Times in 1995 about his first marriage. "I know it hurt some people that I had failed in my marriage. And the marriage was my own failure." The pair had three children together — Annie, Lily, and Joe. The three of them were under 10 years old, and the "JFK" star lamented only seeing them half as much after the divorce.

Simultaneously, the actor was working on the scandalously expensive film "Waterworld," which he starred in and produced. Balancing these two events at the same time wasn't easy. Reportedly, director Kevin Reynolds abandoned the project due to the endless fights with Costner and the studio. According to the film's writer, Peter Rader, Costner and Silva's divorce was one of the reasons for this fallout between the filmmakers. "Costner was having to carry the movie, while his marriage was falling apart," Rader told Yahoo! Entertainment.

After Silva, Costner had a son with Bridget Rooney and married Christine Baumgartner in 2004, with whom he had three more kids (he has seven kids in total). However, the fear of getting divorced almost kept him from marrying her, he told Extra in 2020, recalling how much his divorce with Silva had affected him (via Us Weekly). The pair did end up filing for divorce in 2023.

In 2012, legendary singer Whitney Houston passed away, a tragedy that sent shockwaves through the world. At just 48 years old, the pop star was found unresponsive in the bathtub of her Beverly Hilton Hotel room hours before she was set to attend a pre-Grammy party. The official cause of death was ruled as accidental drowning, with heart disease and cocaine use listed as contributing factors. Houston and Kevin Costner had a tight-knit friendship for decades, and he had tried to help her with her addictions. Her death shook him to his core. By request of Houston's cousin, singer Dionne Warwick, Costner recited a heartfelt eulogy at her funeral; judging by the 17 full minutes in which he homaged her between tears, theirs was a special friendship.

Costner, who was already friends with Houston, picked her to star next to him in the 1992 film "The Bodyguard" as the glamorous Rachel Marron. In his eulogy, he said she was "the only one who could have played" the character (via YouTube). "You weren't just pretty," he added. "You were as beautiful as a woman could be ... There's a lady in heaven who is making God himself wonder how he created something so perfect."

12 years after her death, he said on "Armchair Expert" that he loved her. "It's not like this giant mystery," Costner stated. "She's always gonna love me, in the song. I was always gonna keep my promise to her ... We had a moment, and I realized that the world had a higher idea of who we were, so I basically embraced it. I was her imaginary bodyguard."

Even after having a cemented A-List status in Hollywood, Kevin Costner took some serious blows in his film career with long-lasting consequences. "The Postman," a 1997 post-apocalyptic film that he directed, produced, and starred in, was a box office flop and a critical disaster to the point of winning five Razzies, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Actor for Costner himself. Speaking about the film's financial failure, he said on Armchair Expert, "I know what a good movie is. I'm not sure what a hit's going to be, but I could tell it was good."

Similarly, he produced and starred in the 1995 film "Waterworld," a Mad Max–inspired epic that became one of the most infamous productions in Hollywood history. From the original budget agreement of $65 million, it ended up costing $175 million (around $300 million today, adjusted to inflation) due to a number of accidents, weather delays, and other production delays that required rebuilding sets and taking twice the initially scheduled time to film. It took time for "Waterworld" to generate revenue, and reviews weren't too kind. The film got four Razzie nominations, including Worst Picture, Worst Actor, and Worst Director.

These high-profile flops in the '90s damaged his reputation as a reliable box-office star, and the actor struggled to find successes throughout the 2000s. Films like "3000 Miles to Graceland" (2001), "Dragonfly" (2002), and "The Guardian" (2006) were either box-office disappointments or critically panned. It would take him a while to find a resurgence: in 2012, the mini-series "Hatfields & McCoys" (2012) earned him an Emmy, and "Yellowstone" revitalized his career in 2018.

In 2016, Kevin Costner was part of the cast of the Academy Award–nominated film "Hidden Figures," a historical drama about three Black women who were mathematicians at NASA, among them the legendary Katherine Johnson, and worked on the Apollo 11 project to put the first man on the moon. Costner played the fictional character of Al Harrison, the director of the Space Task Group at NASA, who recognizes the brilliance of Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson) and breaks down barriers to allow her to work on the project. Despite being a scene-stealer, many don't know that the actor was in so much pain that he had to shoot the film on morphine. He was suffering from kidney stones, a condition that is characterized by a sharp pain in the right side of the abdomen, but the show had to go on.

"I've never worked drunk on a set. I've never worked high on a set, but I was on morphine the last two weeks that I worked," the star told PEOPLE. "I worked 10 days under an IV drip." He added that he had never missed a day of work in his life, and this would not be the first time. "I sat in my trailer with a morphine drip in my arm," he said. "I wanted to cry, but there was everybody watching, so I didn't."

A Hollywood legal showdown took place in 2012 that left Kevin Costner with one fewer friend. His battle against "The Usual Suspects" actor Stephen Baldwin was over cold, hard cash — specifically, an oil-cleaning technology deal that went south after the 2010 BP oil spill. Costner had invested in Ocean Therapy Solutions, a company that developed machines to separate oil from water that were designed by his brother, engineer Dan Costner. When disaster struck in the Gulf of Mexico, BP agreed to buy the technology. Baldwin and his business partner, Spyridon Contogouris, were early investors in the company, but they claimed Costner kept them in the dark about BP's interest while secretly negotiating a multi-million-dollar deal. By the time Baldwin and Contogouris sold their shares, Costner allegedly walked away with the big bucks and left them empty-handed. 

Baldwin sued Costner in 2010 for $17 million, crying fraud and deception. In a dramatic, Hollywood-style twist, Costner came out victorious — a federal jury ruled in his favor in 2012, rejecting Baldwin's claims. The verdict? Baldwin made a bad business decision, and Costner had no legal duty to inform him of the BP deal. The "Yellowstone" actor had been especially concerned for his reputation. He said, "My name means more to me than money and that's why we didn't settle" (CBS News). According to Costner's lawyer, he had been a target due to his fame. This lawsuit burned every bridge possible between the two. Unlike some Hollywood grudges that heal with time, Costner and Baldwin's fallout was final.