Kevin Costner Biography (3)
Throughout his career, Costner has continued to defy categorization by blending his career choices with equal parts comedy, action and drama. A natural athlete, Costner applied those talents in the baseball comedy, Bull Durham, the comedy-drama Field of Dreams, the bicycle saga American Flyers and, most recently, the romance For Love of the Game. In 1996, Costner re-teamed with his Bull Durham director, Ron Shelton, for the golf-centered romantic comedy, Tin Cup.
With his role as a dead body in the quintessentially 80s comedy-drama, The Big Chill (which was later edited out), Costner began successful collaboration with director Lawrence Kasdan, with whom he also made the westerns Wyatt Earp and Silverado. Costner also played the title character opposite Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard, which he produced from a script by Kasdan. Costner subsequently starred in the postapocalyptic epic Waterworld, the Clint Eastwood film A Perfect World,and the coming-of-age-drama The War.
Other notable roles include New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone's JFK; the legendary title role in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; Elliott Ness in Brian DePalma's The Untouchables; the widowed shipbuilder in Message in a Bottle and the title character in The Postman, his second directing effort. He most recently starred as Presidential Aide Kenny O'Donnell in director Roger Donaldson's Thirteen Days. Costner previously collaborated with Donaldson on the hit political thriller, No Way Out.
As a television producer, Costner created and hosted the television documentary 500 Nations, which chronicled the tribal histories of Native American peoples from the earliest signs of life on the continent to the 20th century.
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