The one role Kevin Costner regrets turning down: “I think they thought I was just stubborn”
Actors in a similar age range, especially major stars, are regularly offered the same roles. In certain cases, two names will circle the same project, so often they inadvertently become trapped within each other’s orbit, which was the case for Kevin Costner and Harrison Ford.
Although the latter is older and made his name before the former debuted onscreen, their shared status as two of Hollywood’s most in-demand leading men throughout the 1980s and early 1990s saw them increasingly interchangeable in studio boardrooms.
The character of James Marshall in Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One was written specifically with Costner in mind, but he decided he’d be better off making Waterworld instead, opening the door for Ford to headline what was the highest-grossing non-Star Wars or Indiana Jones movie of his career at the time.
Costner’s part in Dragonfly was written for Ford before he turned it down, and he also knocked back the chance to play Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone’s JFK. Similarly, Costner was one of the names on the shortlist to take top billing in The Fugitive, and that connection has carried right through to the modern day, with Ford joining the Yellowstone world as the great-great-granduncle of Costner’s John Dutton.
That’s without mentioning how Jack Ryan ties them together, either. Costner was approached to lead The Hunt for Red October, but he turned it down. When Ford declined, Alec Baldwin was drafted in, and he was replaced by Ford in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. When Chris Pine’s reboot Shadow Recruit rolled around, Costner came full circle and took the role of Thomas Harper.
The actor and filmmaker was open to embodying Tom Clancy’s literary creation, especially with the riches on offer, but he was determined that funnelling his own wealth into a passion project that doubled as his feature-length directorial debut would be more fulfilling creatively and artistically.
“I would have done Red October. I wanted to do it, but I had postponed Dances With Wolves for a year, and I was suddenly going to make it. I really couldn’t do anything else,” he told Den of Geek. “They offered me more money than I had ever seen, and I think they thought I was just stubborn. But I wasn’t! ‘No’ didn’t mean ‘More money!’, it meant that I couldn’t do it. I had given my word on Dances With Wolves.“
Costner admits he “would have loved to have done Red October, but it just wasn’t going to happen,” with Dances with Wolves taking precedence. He may have regretted missing out, but winning a pair of Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ no doubt helped soften the blow, and he eventually got his shot at Jack Ryan, even if Shadow Recruit was a flop.
