Kevin Costner: 51 and proud of it

"I am very comfortable being my age. What my 51 years has brought me are friendships and people I would never have met at 20 that I could meet at this age because of the things I could do because I traveled this far and this distance," says Kevin Costner.

He adds, "I am grateful for where I am and for the people who inhabit my life as a result of being 51."

Do actors age? Do they actually grow old?

These are the questions movie fans don’t necessarily ask themselves every day because stars – Hollywood stars, to be exact – live such glamorous lives that all that is seen in public are their well-coifed hairs, designer suits, fresh new faces and all that makes them a star.

But, surprise, surprise. They do age. And when they start talking of things that touch on mortality we listen and listen more to hear the stories we normally wouldn’t read from celebrity magazines.

Costner met with The STAR and a host of other journalists recently in L.A. for the promotional junket of Touchstone Pictures’ riveting action-adventure drama The Guardian.

In the movie, he plays Ben Randall, a seasoned yet flawed Coast Guard rescue swimmer who, after surviving a violent storm, is sent against his will to train a group of young and arrogant new recruits. He plays the veteran rescuer to Ashton Kutcher’s brash rookie.

Because of his role in the movie, the subject of the press conference decidedly focused on his advanced age compared to the young cast who populate the movie.

"I think movies succeed when people play the right age. All movies will be just fine as long as actors play where they should be playing," he remarks. "One of the first rules of acting is: I can do anything. You can’t! You can’t do anything."

Of course, he can do almost anything.

Costner is among a handful of Hollywood actors who has received an Oscar directing award. His was for the Western epic Dances with Wolves.

And in a career spanning over 20 years, his movies have collectively grossed over $1.3 billion.

"The one thing I’ve enjoyed that hasn’t been particularly a very good career advice is I’ve done a lot of genres so it confuses people where I’ve gone," he says. "I haven’t repeated myself in a lot of different stories or made the same version of the same story. I am happy about that. It’s probably not shrewd business but I revisit these genres and I revisit them at a different age."

"The promise that I’m trying to keep to my audience is to bring originality both in the movie I choose to be in and the character that I perform."

Costner’s career took a beating after his disastrous disaster epic Waterworld tanked at the box-office and cost him the goodwill he has acquired through the years. It didn’t help that his follow-up movie The Postman also failed to ignite the box-office.

His personal life also took a nasty turn. He divorced from his wife of 16 years in 1994 only to re-marry 10 years after.

"We are all flawed. It is safe to say that somebody is really good at what they do, they’re admired at work, they’re gifted but that doesn’t mean they are always able to maintain their personal lives. Sometimes our job is where we excel. There are other people who don’t excel at work but where they excel is at home. I try every day and I succeed a lot and I fail a lot. The only difference is that my failures can be recorded and seem to be of vital interest to the rest of the world," says Costner.

He returned to the scene in 2003 with another Western epic Open Range and has since starred in a variety of movies like Rumor Has It with Jennifer Aniston and the dark comedy The Upside of Anger.

"I don’t gloat over being right because what’s right?" he asks. "Because a movie made a lot of money, I was suddenly right? I don’t think that’s what makes a good movie. Does success make you right?"

He says further: "One thing to know about heroes is sometimes they lose and we cheer for them more because they lose. Why? It’s because they are true to their characters. We live in a society that wants to reward the ultimate reward, but actually when we watch a movie the person we cheer most for is the person that we admire the most."

"We saw (in) the movie Giant one of the most heroic moments in American cinema. When Rock Hudson fights that guy in the bar at the end of the movie, defending his little Chicano grandchild, and he lost and Elizabeth Taylor looks at him and says to him in defeat, lying in a corner, beaten by a very tough man, ‘You never stood taller.’ And I never forgot that moment – that in defeat there was this incredible heroic thing."

Costner will be seen next in Mr. Brooks, where, true to form, he portrays a serial killer – a role he has not played before.

Directed by Andrew Davis, The Guardian is now showing in local theaters.