tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with a two-time oscar winner, kevin costner. he is both star and producer of a new mini series for the history channel called the three-night, six-hour project about the most famous family feud in all of american history premieres may 28. we are glad you have joined us. a conversation with kevin costner coming up right now. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

tavis: please welcome kevin costner to this program. he has been one of hollywood's most recognizable and acclaimed artists of the past two decades. a strain of memorable projects. before we get to his latest, here is a sample of some of his outstanding work. >> i should have been here. i wanted to be. >> i know. i understand. just tell me, are you being careful? >> careful as mice. >> are you making progress? >> progress? i think your husband just became the man who got al capone.

>> lt. dunbar? >> and yes, sir. >> they sent you here to be posted? >> i am here by my own request. i have always wanted to see the frontier.

>> he will come. if you build it. >> you do not look like a body guard. >> what did you expect? >> i don't know. maybe a tough guy. >> this is my disguise. love i will never ask for too much just all that you are and everything that you do i don't really need to look very much further i don't want to go where you don't follow

i can't run from myself i don't know where to hide ♪ tavis: thankfully, your career is nowhere near being over. if the "hatfields & mccoys" was the last project on top of that all some body of work, would you be happy with your corpus? >> yes, i would. i was surprised about how happy i was about "hatfields & mccoys," to be able to play this quintessential american role, people with guns, fighting, a vengeance. the american fabric of how we moved across this continent. if you were tough enough, smart enough, ruthless enough, you could maybe hold on to something you did not have in europe. that was a lot of our dna. tavis: before we get too deep

into this conversation, his next project he has turned to tv for. a three-part, 6 hour miniseries called "hatfields & mccoys," beginning monday, may 28. here is a preview. >> come unarmed to ask you for my boys. you have my word. i will turn them over to the law. >> your voice that my brother. they stabbed him over and over again. they shot him. >> i would like to see my sons. >> i do not think so.

>> i rue the day i save your life. may god rest your eternal soul. -- god om -- one more time, you will not be making the ride home. tavis: situate this miniseries in your overall body of work. >> i am probably -- when you boil me down, i am quintessentially an american actor. i mean, i am a baseball bat. i am the cowboy guy. i have tried to do a lot of and a loth the jfk's of different movies, but i am about as american as you can get

in terms of how i -- the films i have done. tavis: i take that point. most of your fans would agree with that. you are americana personified in terms of the theater. the question is, was that by choice or by chance? >> i feel really lucky about how everything has come down for me. i was going down the road of what am i going to do in my life? i come from a blue-collar background and you go to school and get married and do all that. by the time your 21, if you have not done some of that stuff, you are kind of old. i did that. i fell into that. that is what i was. i come from a very conservative, a baptist background. it served me well. i had to open my eyes to actually see the world. braley the hardest thing i had to do was realized, in a blue-

collar family, to say to my family that i think i am a performer. i think i can tell stories. if i was around all the guys with their lunch pails, they kind of snickered. costner does not want to grow up. he wanted to be recessed. -- to be recess. in my heart, i knew i was a storyteller. making that decision, once you make a decision to be an actor, there is no guarantee of success. that is the bad news. now you have got to try to do what you are doing. dad, i am going to interview. how're you going to do that? nobody knows you. you come up against the people who love you the most. the reason they are like that is they are afraid. they do not want you to fail. the reality was, the pressure shifted from the to those who loved me the most. tavis: this is a long way from

being a hollywood tour guide. >> i was a stage manager down here for $3.50 out of college. i was not exactly moving up the pay scale. i was not headed toward my first car or house. but i was really happy. i was really happy. somehow, i had got on my own path. biblically speaking, the down, i have sons and the thing you worry about the most is, are they going to find their way? you worry about them even more than your daughters. my father had that about me. i felt like, man, the fact that i knew what i wanted to do was the only break i really needed in life, to actually know what i wanted to do. tavis: you said three things. why a greater concern for your son's then your daughters?

>> exactly. you are so protective of your daughters. there is something about knowing -- men are -- i know this sounds really -- people are looking at me saying, he is really a male- oriented. i am not. i love my daughters. the idea that in the world you grow up in, you have to be a provider. i want my sons to have that satisfaction, that they are not in my shadow, that they find their place in the world and are able to do it gracefully and successfully. that does not eliminate my daughters. it sounds like they are just eliminated. i challenge my son to make sure my daughters -- that he takes care of his sisters. they are probably smarter than all of us, the girls. tavis: how do you board against being an a-list celebrity, knowing that you want your kids to get outside of that shadow.

it is a lot easier said than done. >> well, it happened for me. my children have never embarrass me in the sense that i never had to stop what i was doing because they behave in such a way that it is like, what did you do? they were normal kids. as things develop over time, they will tell me some things that i do not know about. they have been the architects of their own lives. i wanted that. i did not care what they had done -- what they will do in life as much as what kind of people they are. i can tell who they are in this world by the friends that are around them. i have been really -- you know, you talk about, are people going to be jealous of you? if they would, it would be these children, in my mind. >> -- tavis: how did this conservative, baptist family take you telling you you wanted to go to hollywood?

how did they take that? >> my mom was worried about it. she said, those people always have so much trouble. richard burton and liz taylor cannot make up their mind if they are in love, out of love, whatever. they were not interested at all in hollywood. i actually did not know that was a job. i am not a rube. early on, i thought that people on the screen were born on the screen. i did not translate it into, that was a job. tavis: you mentioned richard burton. there is a great story about your past that i read some time ago. do you remember the story? >> yes. more has been made of it -- i was in a moment of time that i was struggling internally, not telling anybody that i wanted to be an actor. he was sitting on a plane and he

had bought three or four seats. i only had one or -- one pair of tennis shoes. those were the ones you play basketball in. this guy bought three or four seats so nobody could sit next to him or talk to him. i am thinking, i still need to talk to him. i walked up to and and everybody on the plane did this. they could not believe it. it was like church, trying to see what was going to happen. i said, i see you are reading that book. i would like to ask you a bit of advice. he looked at me and went, ok. now all the people sit back down. my wife, at the time, was going, what is that about? it is just in my head. i watched him and i watched a reading that book. finally, he closed the book. i am thinking, this is my moment. he lay back and went to sleep. i thought, oh mna.

he did a cat nap in a few minutes, he waived for me to come forward. we talked for a little bit. it is not really important what he said to me, but it was -- he was gentle. i think it could have been rough. he did what his privacy. what i learned is that if one person comes forward, the whole plane things they could come forward. i could never really violated his space. i thought about it in a lot of ways. regrets, we all have a few. in my hundred, i would have loved to be able to talk to him later and that opportunity never happened. tavis: i do not know if there is an answer to this, but given that you were, at best, uneven about whether or not you wanted to be an actor at a particular time, and now your career is really americana on screen, were

there persons that you started to pay attention to? were there americana actors that you wanted to model? >> i would say mcqueen and newman. i love the character actors. i love were gone and those guys. -- warrick vaughn and those guys. i love movies in general. when i watch movies, something that started to strike me was, i started to understand where the moments worker it -- where the moments were. there were a lot of moments that i did not understand. i was usually on the left-hand side of the bell curve. trying to sit next to the one who was on this side of it. the idea about film made sense to me. tavis: you were not a good student, but you're a pretty

good athlete. >> i was ok. i could play a little bit. with the idea of movies, it was the first time i understood that i could be a good student. i went to ucla while i was stage manager and i took classes. i remember reading the entire book before the first class. i did not read the entire book when i was in college. like most people, i pulled and all-nighter before finals. i was harder to compete with. i showed up the first day and the book was read. i want to know if we could move on from the book. the teacher was like, wait. i was like, i have waited for a longtime area i want to know what you know. academically, i was on fire. tavis: when did you fully commit yourself to being a thespian? >> i do not think anybody has ever asked me that. there was a moment in time that i knew that i had. i cannot isolate it, but i took

a job in the industry for 30 days. the only reason i stayed was because i got to a headhunter. he would not have gone his commission if i left. i wanted to stay long enough so he would have that happen for him. i came home and told my wife, i want to be an actor. that was it. i was probably 22 years old. then it was like, how? i do not know how, but the same way anything else happens in life. you are going to work for it. that was it. there was a real switch. like i said, the pressure switched from me. i felt really at ease at that moment. tavis: fast forward a few years. you know the project i am talking about. the first big break and it ends up on the cutting room floor. did you rethink this? >> no. so many things marked me on this particular movie.

we are talking about "the big chill." i knew when i got the movie i was around the right guy. all that did was confirmed to me all of the things that i really felt, that it was about rehearsal. i really felt strongly that the movie would work. it was my own sensibility. i really, really did. when it did, i was not surprised. the reality of being cut out feels like it could probably deflate most people. i will tell you honestly, it did not for me. i would have liked to be in the movie, but in my mind, if i was a person living in a state and this movie came in and i had a little scene and now the scene was cut out, i might have been this far -- i might have been disheartened because it might have been my only chance. i do not always go for the end game. i know when i am picking up momentum. when i am around the right people, things are run to start

to work for me. when i got the part, i knew that was my big break, not being on screen. somebody could look at that in retrospect, how did you really know that? but that is the truth. i knew that i was changed at that moment. i knew that i would be able to parlay all of this. in fact, there was a big problem with a lot of people saying, why are you not doing press? you need to let people know you were in this movie. intuitively, i did not want to do it. somebody back east said, i have tried to track this actor down. and they went through a step-by- step thing about trying to get a hold of me. i said, -- they said, it is clear nothing will ever happen for this guy. i do not feel victorious over that little comment, but the point was, in my life, you do not take credit for things that you are not in. you just do not do it that way. in truth, when things actually did start to happen, that story

had so much more power that i was in "the big chill." in lee, i am in "trivial pursuit," a lot of stuff. the mythology of the movie is a big part of my story. tavis: i feel similarly. it is important, no matter what you do in life, to be able to sense when you are gaining momentum. it is good to know when you are gaining momentum. the flip side of that is knowing when to pump your brakes. you had many successes and some failures. if you can sense the momentum, how do you sense when this is not working or is not going to work? >> you have to have a force of will. you will not accept that you will wake up tomorrow and think about something differently. i wake up differently and think, if i really believe in this

thing, it is not worth it. tomorrow, i am going to think differently about this. maybe i am not thinking it through thoroughly. just driving things to make it happen may be has not served me well. in certain instances, you go, we are going to solve this. i'm going to make this happen. read the tea leaves right. i do not know. i accept that idea and i really cannot change that dna about me. i probably can learn to, if something is stalling a little bit, maybe step back for a minute. tavis: even when you are a major box office star, when you hit rock bottom on a project, when it just goes south on you and the critics eat you alive, how do you get through that? there are folks who suggested after "waterworld" your career

was drowned. you are back, obviously. but how do you get through those dark periods? >> you have to believe in yourself. if you believe it is a good movie, that is the truth. you have to know what you believe. you can spend your life trying to be popular and that is a tricky business. you can just try to be true to yourself. it did not feel like rock bottom. for me, there was a lot about that moment that was a high mark in my career. people were running for the exits but i did not. i stuck with the movie. i did not start the movie not having a third act. but these movies have a life of their own. at the end of the day, i stood with the movie. is it a perfect movie? is it a beloved movie?

it actually is. i accept that as a part of who i am. tavis: i am pleased to have you on this program for two nights. tomorrow, we will talk specifically about the "hatfields & mccoys." mwai it now is a good time for you to return to television for this minisers. >> is like love. you do not to treat you might have an idea of a girl that will walk in the room. you're having a hamburger and there goes the waitress. your idea of the model or whenever -- or whatever, ducked my career about what speaks to me all about. i made at two movies in a row. one was not what you would call a great strategy. baseball movies do not work. now i do two in a row. i was really confident in what i read, that they separated themselves. this is what i should be doing.

that i want to go out and do some other thing, but "the of dreams -- "field of dreams, there it was. i am confident in storytelling. i feel like i have lost the question. we were moving to yet another movie. i circled back to "field of dreams." tavis: you got it. i was talking about, why television? >> is spoken out loud to me. do i think the world wants to see "hatfields & mccoys?" no. i read the story and thought the world might find it interesting once they see it. tavis: we will pick up on this very night tomorrow night -- on this very note tomorrow night. this is just the end for

tonight. we will continue to mar night. we will see you then. thank you for watching. >> home run, in the crowd. >> i thought i was going to throw a deuce, right? >> yep. >> that all got out of here in a hurry. anything the travel that far ought to have a damn rudest, don't you think? >> for more information on at

pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for part two of our conversation with kevin costner. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it is the cornerstone we all know. it is not just a street or boulevard but a place where walmart stands with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to our pbs station from yours like you. thank you.