Costner, Kevin

US film actor, director, and producer. He emerged as a star in the late 1980s, and is best known as director, star, and co-producer of Dances with Wolves (1990), a Western sympathetic to the American Indians, that won seven Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director) in 1991.

His breakthrough role was in the Western Silverado (1985), and he gained in popularity with starring roles in the thriller No Way Out (1987), the baseball film Field of Dreams (1989), and the thriller The Bodyguard (1992). He became increasingly identified with the embodiment of idealism and high principle, for which he was both lauded and criticized. His success declined in the late 1990s with a string of poorly received films, but in 2000 he was acclaimed for his understated performance in Thirteen Days.