The hand-picked actor who refused to work with Ron Howard: “I never knew why he wasn’t interested”
He may not be anyone’s idea of an exciting, dynamic, or visually daring filmmaker, but that hasn’t stopped Ron Howard from becoming one of the most successful directors in cinema history.
Not that there’s any shame in being a safe pair of hands, especially when it leads to a career as long and lucrative as Howard’s. He’s acknowledged that he’ll never be celebrated for his artistic merits, but it’s never bothered him, and based on a filmography that’s earned more than $4 billion at the box office, it hasn’t bothered audiences either.
The former Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days stalwart has been around for so long that he must be the only person in Hollywood who’s worked with both John Wayne and Sydney Sweeney, and his reputation as Hollywood’s safest pair of hands has drawn many A-listers, legends, icons, and newcomers into his orbit, apart from the one who turned him down flat.
It’s never the wisest idea to have the subject of a biographical drama get a say in matters of casting, but Howard didn’t disagree with Jim Lovell’s preferred candidate to play him in Apollo 13. In fact, he was 100% on board with the idea, the only issue being that the astronaut’s hand-picked surrogate didn’t want anything to do with the picture.
“Kevin Costner looked a lot like Jim Lovell, and Jim Lovell said, ‘Do you think you could get Kevin Costner to play this part?'” Howard recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. An inspiring true-life story about Americans triumphing against seemingly insurmountable odds sounded like it was right up Costner’s street, but when he was sounded out for Apollo 13, he gave it the cold shoulder.
“It seemed like a good idea,” Howard agreed. “Costner was hot as a pistol at that moment and was somebody I was interested in working with. I never really knew why he wasn’t interested.” Fortunately, Howard received a phone call from the representatives of someone he knew very well, who informed him that “it’s your buddy Tom Hanks’ dream to play an astronaut.”
He didn’t need to think twice about reuniting with his Splash star, and Costner’s loss was Hanks’ gain. Even though Lovell had named the Dances with Wolves frontman as the perfect person to play him in Apollo 13, the feelings weren’t reciprocated, and the former opted to make two consecutive duds instead.
Hanks, a lifelong space exploration obsessive, got top billing in a critical and commercial hit that was heralded as one of the best movies of 1995 and Howard’s favourite film he’s ever directed, even if he wasn’t overly thrilled at being shut out of the ‘Best Director’ race at the following year’s Oscars.
Meanwhile, between Hanks being announced as Lovell in early 1994 and Apollo 13 being released in cinemas in June of the following year, Costner won a Razzie for ‘Worst Actor’ in the flop Wyatt Earp and took top billing in the even more disastrous Waterworld, two movies that helped take the shine from his A-list status, so there’s no debate over who got the better end of the deal.
