Kevin Costner’s arduous quest to gain acting advice from Richard Burton: “I want to have a life that’s not filled with drama”
There are some great stories of lifechanging advice being given to some of the best actors in history, and one of those is what neo-Western hero and all-round icon Kevin Costner finally got out of one of the Godfathers of acting, Richard Burton.
Burton’s position as an acting great is undeniable, but perhaps his lesser-known virtues as a man of the people who was as capable of delivering a mean right hook or a beer-splattered insult as well as a Shakespearean soliloquy is what set him apart and endeared him to thousands of other actors. That was certainly the case for Kevin Costner.
A chance meeting on the plane home from Costner’s honeymoon in Mexico changed the trajectory of his career, as Burton sat just seats away from him, having bought the surrounding free ones to ensure he was alone. Speaking to Roger Ebert, Costner said: “He had bought the seats all around him so no one could sit with him”. Costner had been taking acting classes and felt he had to pluck up the courage to speak to Burton – it was now or never.
Burton replied: “When I finish my book” and Costner went back to his seat and watched Burton like a hawk. Burton finished the book, and then he put his head back and went to sleep for ten minutes, a short amount of time that likely felt an eternity for the young actor hoping to steal a few precious and hopefully conscious seconds. “I hadn’t even told my wife how much I was thinking about wanting to be an actor,” said Costner, “and I was on the edge of my seat.”
Burton finally looked over at Costner and gestured for him to approach: “I’ve always kinda kept it private what the conversation was […] I told him, ‘I was hoping to become an actor, and, well, you’re a celebrated actor, but you’re a brawler, you’ve had a lot of marriages, a lot of things … I just want to know, does that kind of life follow an actor? I want to have a life that’s not filled with drama.'”
Perhaps niave from Costner, but Burton looked at him and he said: “‘You have green eyes. I have green eyes.’ And he goes, ‘I think you’ll be fine.’ Now we’ve landed, we get our bags, and my wife and I set on our bags out on the street because we had an $8 bus ride to Anaheim where our parents were gonna pick us up. And this limousine comes by, and it stops and the window comes down, and it’s Richard, and he goes, ‘Good luck.'”
Quite rightly, this is something Costner will always remember: “And the window went up and he went out of my life, and I never had the chance to ever talk to him about the fact that in a way, because of him, I had a life in the movies. Of course, I’ve been bruised in this world, but I’ve tried to hold on to my normalcy, my life, my children and stuff.”
The desire for us to reach out to our idols is often tempered by circumstance and the old adage of “never meet your heroes”. However, sometimes, all you need is a word of encouragement from your hero, and Kevin Costner is living proof.
