Want to know the best Kevin Costner movies? How about the worst Kevin Costner movies? Curious about Kevin Costner’s box office grosses or which Kevin Costner movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Kevin Costner movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Recently I was re-reading William Goldman’s The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood? and Other Essays. In that book I kept noticing that Goldman kept referring to Kevin Costner (1955-) as one of the most powerful and successful actors working in Hollywood. That got me to think about two things. (1) Yes indeed from 1987 to 1993…Kevin Costner was the main man in Hollywood. He was ranked as a Top 10 Film Star from 1990 to 1993…and topped the rankings in 1991. (2) Maybe it was time to finally do Macklte33’s request for a Kevin Costner page….since you are reading this page then you know that I followed through with that thought.
His IMDb page shows over 65 acting credits since 1981. This page will rank 41 Kevin Costner movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, cameos and movies that were not released in North American theaters were not included in the rankings.
Kevin Costner Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Kevin Costner Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Kevin Costner movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Kevin Costner movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Kevin Costner movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Kevin Costner movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Kevin Costner movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Kevin Costner movie won.
- Sort Kevin Costner movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Kevin Costner Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses
Possibly Interesting Facts About Kevin Costner
1. Kevin Costner was born in Lynwood, California in 1955. He grew up in Compton, California.
2. Kevin Costner and morgues. Before Costner became famous he could be briefly seen partying in a city morgue with Michael Keaton in Ron Howard’s Night Shift. In 1983 he was cast as Alex in The Big Chill. His entire part was cut but he is still visible as the body being dressed at the beginning of the film at the funeral home.
3. To date Kevin Costner has appeared in 8 sports movies. 4 baseball movies: Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, For Love Of The Game and Upside of Anger (he played a former baseball star). 1 football movie: Draft Day. 1 golf movie: Tin Cup. 1 bicycle racing movie: American Flyers and 1 track movie: McFarland, USA.
4. Kevin Costner has been married two times. He married to Cindy Costner from 1978 to 1994. They have 3 children. He has been married to Christine Baumgartner since 2004….they also have 3 children.
5. For Kevin Costner’s entire career, he has purposely avoided doing sequels to his films. So far, he is one of the few blockbuster stars to never come back for a sequel.
6. Kevin Costner has received 3 Oscar® nominations. He won Oscars for Best Director and Best Producer for Dances With Wolves. He received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Dances With Wolves as well, but lost to Jeremy Irons’ performance in Reversal of Fortune.
7. Along with Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Richard Attenborough and Robert Redford one of 6 people to win an Academy Award for “Best Director“, though they are mainly known as actors.
8. Roles Kevin Costner turned down or was seriously considered for: Harrison Ford role in Air Force One, Tom Hanks role in Apollo 13, Bruce Willis role in Armageddon, Alec Baldwin role in The Hunt For Red October, David Carradine role in the Kill Bill movies, Richard Gere role in An Officer and A Gentleman, Nicolas Cage role in Raising Arizona, Tim Robbins role in Shawshank Redemption and Nick Nolte role in The Prince of Tides.
9. Kevin Costner has received a surprising 16 Razzie nominations in his movie career but none since 2002….that is up there with Sly Stallone and Adam Sandler. He has won or is it lost? 6 Razzies.
10. Check out Kevin Costner‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Another good website to check out is from a friend to our website…Steve Lensman’s Top 40 Kevin Costner Movies.
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Although until this day Kevin Costner has continued to enjoy a prolific career in terms of volume of movie output, his heyday was actually a relatively short one from The Untouchables in 1987 until Tin Cup in 1996. In that period he was about as big as any star around, with blockbuster hits such as Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Bodyguard and JFK.
He even got billed above Clint Eastwood in 1993’s A Perfect World, something nobody else has done for 50 years, not even Clint’s own pal Burt Reynolds in 1984’s City Heat; indeed Clint would not even agree to Burt’s request to be billed first on just the cast lists! [The last time Clint was billed less than first, leaving aside 3 fleeting cameos in which he was uncredited, was 1969’s Paint Your Wagon where Lee Marvin was top billed].
Kev has APPEARED IN three big hits in recent time but his roles in those were supporting/cameos and the 22 other films that he has made since 1996 have grossed just $0.89** billion approx. in the US, a paltry average of around $40 million per movie according to WH above. Tin Cup way back in in 1996 was in fact the last movie in which Kev had the lead, that crashed through the Cogerson magical $100 million barrier in adjusted domestic grosses. Tin Cup was one of the last of the feel-good movies of its kind in that era which I used to enjoy before you made me start to feel guilty about watching “mush”!
**By contrast the albeit-worldwide adjusted gross of over $900 million in the table above exceeds that figure on its own.
However Kevin’s personal net worth is said to be $250 million placing among the richest movie stars in history. IMDB credits him with 56 acting awards and 57 nominations. I think that your opening quote from Kev which suggests that “real heroes” are men who are flawed and fail and fall at real-life things but show courage because they are true to their commitments and beliefs should be instructive reading for the likes of Sly, The Rock and the rest of The Heavy Brigade.
Best POSTERS entries 40-21 1/3000 Miles to Graceland 2/two for The Postman [the movie that was such a flop that it was the one that started Costner’s mega-star decline from which he never completely if at all recovered – $80 million budget and actual US gross of just 21 million 3/Revenge 4/American Flyers 5/The Highwaymen 6/Dragonfly 7/2nd one for For the Love of the game 8/Fandango 9/Draft Day
Entries 1-20 1/Upside of Anger 2/Wyatt Earp 3/the entire set for The Guardian 4/1st one for Myrna’s Game 5/2nd one for Mr Brooks 6/two for Silverado 7/ No Way out 8/Foreign Language one for JFK 9/The Untouchables 10/Dances with Wolves foreign language one.
My Pick of the STILLS – all entries 1/with “Jen” 2/Three Days to Kill 3/The Postman 4/Message in the Bottle 5/Criminal 6/The War [strange b/w one?] 7/The Bodyguard – possibly my own fave Costner film and I have always been surprised by the hostility towards it by the Joels of this world. WH for example give it a miserly 45% so I am pleased that you award at least a respectable 65%. As the cliché goes “Good thinking Batman!” 8/Waterworld 9/Robin Hood 10/The Guardian 11/Man of Steel 12/Open Range 13/Silverado [lobby card?] 14/Thirteen Days 15/No way Out 16/Field of Dreams 17/JFK 18/The Untouchables.
ASSOCIATED TRIVIA (1) Dances with Wolves is the only one of Kev’s major heyday flicks that I’ve not seen because its theme never interested me (2) in the poster for Field of Dreams that you show and which has been shown ever since its release, I always thought that Kev looked a bit like Henry Winkler as “The Fonz” in TV’s Happy Days [1974-84] (3) Man of Steel is the last superhero movie I can recall seeing (4) I rate your Costner video 98% (5) You and WH agree on 5 of Kev’s Top 6 best reviewed. He includes Hidden Figures instead of your choice of Field of Dreams and I support you there. But it’s ‘swings and roundabouts’ ashe wins my applause for listing the tremendous No Way Out as his No 1 against your selection of Dances with Wolves as your top rated.
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my Kevin Costner video, appreciate the generous rating, box office info, trivia, observation and comparison.
Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Black and white stills still make appearances even in modern actors videos. Colour comes first but if I see an interesting B/W photo in it goes. Old style lobby cards were still appearing sporadically, especially in foreign markets.
I still haven’t seen Hidden Figures and it had good ratings but we can’t have that movie topping Costner’s iconic movie roles can we? Just doesn’t seem right. 🙂
Like you say The Bodyguard gets a lot of flak, especially from critics and the dreadful film snobs who only collect films if they’re in a foreign language. But it was very popular and was slickly made by Brit director Mick Jackson.
Btw Costner recently mentioned the lady in the famous poster wasn’t Whitney Houston –
“That wasn’t even Whitney actually,” Costner tells EW. “She had gone home and that was her double, and her head was buried into my shoulder, which was appropriate anyway. She was frightened.”
Two films scored 10 out of 10 in Costner’s filmography – The Untouchables and Dances With Wolves. Two more scored 9 – JFK and Field of Dreams. Eight films scored 8 out of 10 including Bull Durham, No Way Out and Thirteen Days.
“My first introduction to English football was in 1990 when I was over here making Robin Hood and I got invited to an Arsenal game. Having watched sports all my life in America, there was no comparison in terms of the emotion that was in the stadium that day. And I really never forgot it.”
“I urge us all, inside and outside, across the nation and around the world, to dry our tears, suspend our sorrow and perhaps our anger just long enough, just long enough to remember the sweet miracle of Whitney.”
HI STEVE Thanks for your close attention to my posts about Kev, including explaining about the b/w stills and the lobby cards. Interesting story and quote about Whitney’s double. It took me in – shows you that Bruce’s Uncle Abe was right- you can fool some of the people ALL of the time. Touching tribute of Kev’s – it’s clear he and Whitney got on well together. Glad you seem to have enjoyed The Bodyguard.
Also interesting is Kevin’s attraction to English football. My son-in-law is a great Liverpool F C fan as was my father. As you can imagine from the moment they met my dad and S i Law got on like soul mates who had been bonding all their lives.
Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens the “Burkeian” Conservative [ie members of the British Conservative Party who claim to be exceptionally caring] absolutely hates football. Peter says that he writes his Sunday columns on Saturdays at the Mail offices and his journey home coincides with the closing stages of major league football team football games at a local stadium. The howls, cheers and other ‘animal’ noises coming from the stadium always give him the urge to go in and close it down.
Good to see you have just done Denzel. He is one of my own fave action heroes whom I still enjoy watching. I’ll get back to you about his video a.s.a.p
Kevin Costner is an underrated film star. Nice perspective of his career.
1 As Bruce’s coverage above and his table suggest Kevin’s very top star years lasted from just 1987 until about 1993 but in those years he was like gold in Hollywood with a string of successes that included the monster hits Bodyguard, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and globally at least JFK; and it is a testament to his star power in those days that he is still the only performer to have got billed above Eastwood (in A Perfect World – 1993) in the last 47 years.
2 Kev never really recovered from the perceived extravagance and critical panning of Waterworld in 1995 even though foreign revenues and DVD/Video sales are said to have put that movie into profit eventually, and despite Tin Cup the following year being a minor success. Therefore the last Cogerson $100 mil smash that he had in a full length role WAS Tin Cup.
3 However a few years back a journalist for a prominent film magazine did a stats survey of Kevin’s career since 2000 and whilst quoting the kind of cinematic figures that are reflected in Bruce’s adjustments above the journalist reckoned that DVD/Video sales put most of Kevin’s films since 2000 into modest profit or at least saved them from losing money when related to production costs. Thus the writer concluded that producers still regarded Kevin as ‘reasonably safe’ value for money and were therefore continuing to give him assignments in leading roles.
4. I would like to see Kevin get another big stand alone success but even if that does not happen I will fondly remember him from his heyday when for me his most entertaining movies were No Way Out, Field of Dreams, Robin Hood and – sorry Bruce ! – The Bodyguard and Waterworld. The latter appealed to me by taking me back to Jimmy Stewart ‘s The Far Country because Kevin’s Mariner had I thought strong shades of Jimmy’s cowboy Jeff Webster in the 1954 western though most people seem to associate Mariner with Mad Max.
5 Anyway it was great to have this updated appreciation of a performer who not too long ago scaled the dizzy heights of stardom, and I was pleased to see that Bruce gave fine critic/audience scores to at least 3 of Kevin’s movies after those days – Open Range, 13 Days and McFarland.
POSTSCRIPT FOR BRUCE Talking of Mad Max whatever became of Mel’s comeback movie Blood Father? – BOB
Hey Bob….one of my favorite behind the scene Hollywood books is by William Goldman….one of those books was written when Costner was the King of Hollywood….reading that book shows just how big Costner was in that 5 or 6 year run.
I actually was not a huge fan of his back then….sort of my Clooney of that time frame….but like Clooney movies I watched almost every movie he made. Yes Waterworld..even though it brought it some good money never got over the “bomb” status it got during the “production of the movie”…ended his run on the top. Then The Postman knocked him down even more.
Yes. Two of his movies….made my bad blockbuster list….but they were still blockbusters. His movies since his peak….have been interesting…..3000 Miles to Graceland is a guilty pleasure……though in a recent interview co-star Kurt Russell said….”that is a movie that I am not too fond off”, Open Range is considered as one the best westerns of the last 20 years…..and Mr. Brooks is gaining a cult following.
As for Blood Father…it got very good reviews…but was barely in theaters…it is already on the shelves on the stores in my area to be bought for home entertainment…I will be checking that out soon. Somehow on Facebook….I have become an admin for one of his Fan Pages…they are still a very excited group of people when it comes to Mr. Gibson…..thanks the feedback on Kevin Costner.
I too am keen to see Blood Father. Most people will think of the Lethal Weapon franchise or at least some of Mel’s other blockbusters but though many of those were entertaining I also loved the quiet dignity that he brought to The Man without a Face. Unlike Flora I do not regard my idols like Alan Ladd as absolute Gods but the one time that Mel annoyed me was when – and I forget the context – he made disparaging remarks in a TV interview about the long-dead Laddie’s height which I thought were inane and superfluous and in fact something that I would have expected from only the likes of Russell Crowe.
Hey Bob….Hacksaw Ridge might return Mel to some of his glory days…the trailer really plays well in theaters…..the good is it is getting some Oscar buzz….the bad is that it is tracking only mildly at the box office….it will be interesting for sure to see how it turns out.
So Mel got you fired up because of a Ladd comment….good stuff there…thanks for sharing.
BRUCE ? / MISCELLANEOUS
1 You’ve already made Julius Caesar up to me by giving me its adjusted WW gross on the Greer Garson page. It almost equals the domestic gross which as you know was a good effort for those days and of course Sayonara’s massive WW gross was also a collector’s item for me not to mention the increased domestic gross. Even I do not give Bud credit for Supe 5 in my data base !
2 Let’s keep our fingers crossed for Hacksaw Ridge.
3 Ironically after that TV interview Mel made one of his movies that were a combined artistic and commercial success, Braveheart, and who produced Braveheart? – Alan Ladd Jr and The Ladd Company. Laddie Jr is apparently one of the industry’s most respective executives and under his tenure as Head of Creative Affairs at Fox the First Star Wars movie was produced He has been in various executive roles over the years and apparently in any executive office that he has occupied a picture of his father has appeared on the wall so at least somebody’s proud of the old star of Citizen Kane. I wonder could Flora get me one of those photos as memorabelia?
Hey Bob….I guess I need to get all the worldwide grosses for Brando posted on his page. I hope Mel comes back…..I think the critical praise for Blood Father and Hacksaw should help in that comeback. Yes Ladd Jr. Had a great run as a producer. Good to know he had that picture….thanks for the comment.
Bruce:
I’m writing on Kevin Costner’s page because he was the star in Field of Dreams.
You do not have screenwriters’ pages, but I wanted to share with you this news.
When I was in grade 12, my Creative Writing teacher started up what he had done in earlier schools:
A Young Authours Conference.
There were three writers who agreed to come and work with us. One was a children’s authour.
Another was award winning Canadian poet Al Purdy.
I had written a story called Woman at a Station and earned the right to be part of that Conference wit the third member of featured writers.
That man was Bill Kinsella aka W.P. Kinsella who wrote Field of Dreams source material Shoeless Joe.
WEll, he is a British Columbia author who had been living in Chilliwack for several years. I know he was a part of the Cummunity’s Scrabble Club. I wish I was better at the game.
I diod not know he was ill.
WE do have an Assisted Suicide bill for people who are terminally ill. Now, I am not posting here to talk politics.
I am letting your readers know that Mr. Kinsella has died at the age 81. He was a big fan of baseball in its purist sense. He lost interest after the 94 strike but got all excited about another Seattle Mariners player.
Rest in Peace Mr.Kinsella. I am honoured to have known you personally even if it was just when I was in grade 12.
Hey Flora….sorry to hear about the passing of Mr. Kinsella. Sounds like A Young Author’s Conference was a great experience for you. Kinsella’s claim to fame is pretty impressive… Field of Dreams has a great following as it relates to almost all dads and sons. Sorry he lost interest in the sport after the strike….I used to watch baseball all the time….but I have not seen a full game in years. RIP Bill Kinsella.
Hey, another interesting actor. I have seen most of his movies and have enjoyed his roles. I believe that he is a very good actor – I enjoyed The Bodyguard – cannot count the number of times I have watched that film and I have it. THANKS SO MUCH FOR THIS SITE.
Hey BERN1960…..thanks for checking out one of my latest movie pages. Glad you enjoyed The Bodyguard so much. Without a doubt it is one of his most popular movies.