The movie that almost made Kevin Costner quit Hollywood: “I didn’t act for about six years”
It took Kevin Costner a while to make a name for himself in Hollywood, and even when he did, his risk-and-reward strategy saw him repeatedly run the risk of all that hard work blowing up in his face.
Eventually it did, and more than once. The first time the actor and filmmaker bet big on himself, the results couldn’t be argued with when Dances with Wolves hoovered up awards like there was no tomorrow and shocked everyone by turning a three-hour western into a global box office sensation.
Things didn’t go quite as well when he invested heavily in Waterworld; they couldn’t have gone much worse than The Postman, and the jury remains out on the ambitious four-part Horizon, although things aren’t looking particularly rosy after the first instalment flopped and the second remains in limbo.
Remarkably, he doesn’t have any regrets. Costner would rather fail on his own terms than succeed on somebody else’s, which is at least commendable. It wasn’t until the one-two punch of Fandango and Silverado in 1985 that he showcased the star quality that swiftly made him one of the biggest and most bankable names in the business, which wouldn’t have come to pass had he made his self-imposed exile from the industry permanent.
Costner initially thought 1983’s The Big Chill would be his moment, only to be left on the cutting room floor. That was a crushing blow for the aspiring actor, especially when he’d only recently returned to the craft, having been left so disenchanted by his first features that he disappeared without a trace.
“They were casting exploitation movies, and my acting teacher asked me if I wanted to do a role, and I said, ‘Yeah, I want to get some experience,'” he recalled to Interview. “I did a T&A movie called Sizzle Beach. Then I did a film called Shadows Run Black, where I played a murder suspect. I felt I really had to become something, because these movies were not the way. So I didn’t act for about six years after that.”
Costner didn’t just regret his debut in the 1981 sex comedy Sizzle Beach, USA; he actively tried to wipe it from the history books. Once he became a household name, Troma purchased the rights to the forgotten B-movie and sought to re-release it to capitalise on his fame, which saw the actor make an offer to buy the original negative in the hopes of destroying it.
That didn’t work, but he did at least manage to stop the company from splicing the sex scene he’d shot for Sizzle Beach into a completely different picture, so there’s that. With his slightly increased standards, Costner returned to the screen in the gambling drama Stacy’s Knights, which was “decent and not exploitative.” A low bar, but significantly better than what he’d been in before.
