The 2016 movie Kevin Costner needed morphine to finish making: “I wanted to cry”
Kevin Costner is a complex Hollywood tough guy who has developed some notoriety because of his ego, leading to plenty of heated situations, but he also struggled to give one of his best late-career performances.
It is impossible to deny the gravity with which Costner takes his responsibilities, as he clearly cares very deeply about the art of cinema and the sustenance of the Hollywood ecosystem, so no matter his reputation of being self-centred and difficult, he’s never been deemed unprofessional.
Costner was at a strange point in his career in the early 2010s, as he was no longer the box office juggernaut that he once was, and even though he had gained some praise for the western miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, he had mostly settled into supporting parts in films like Man of Steel and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. However, he got the opportunity to take on a more important part when he was offered Al Harrison in the biographical drama Hidden Figures.
Hidden Figures is based on the true story of three African-American women who charted the route for America’s first voyage into space, which resulted in a successful mission for the astronaut John Glenn, played by Glen Powell. Costner co-starred as the leader of the Space Task Group, who was noted for fighting against racism in NASA, and while he was enthusiastic about the part, he said he had “worked ten days under an IV drip” because he had developed kidney stones and needed to be on medication.
“I’ve never worked drunk on a set. I’ve never worked high on a set, but I was on morphine the last two weeks that I worked,” Costner said, “I don’t even know how. About three days of it, I was normal, and then something happened to me.”
The actor said that he had “never missed a day of work”, but had to keep his sleeves down so it would mask the bruises on his arm. “I sat in my trailer with a morphine drip in my arm,” he revealed, “I wanted to cry, but there was everybody watching, so I didn’t”.
While acknowledging that it was very painful, Costner turned in one of his better recent performances in Hidden Figures, which became a box office hit and earned many accolades, including an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Picture’, and also earned him a Sag Award, as part of the ‘Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture’ alongside Mahershala Ali, Taraji P Henson, Kirsten Dunst, Aldis Hodge, Janelle Monáe, Jim Parsons, and Glen Powell.
Hidden Figures proved to be the first act of Costner’s comeback, which gained more heat just two years later when he starred in Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount Network drama Yellowstone, quickly becoming one of the most-watched shows in America, and lending him a strong enough following for him to eventually leave the show to direct his passion project, the multi-part western epic Horizon: An American Saga.
The first chapter debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024 before hitting theatres, where it underperformed, while the second chapter has been completed and screened at some festivals and has yet to get a new release date.
