Kevin Costner isn’t about to let being an “older gentleman” keep him from kicking butt.
“I can chase the bad guy just as well as anybody,” said the actor about his role as a dying Secret Service in “3 Days to Kill,” though he admits there were times as a younger man when he could have gone in more of an “action star” direction: “It’s not a staple of what I do, but it’s clearly something I could have done, and maybe fostered.”
The new film plays off of Costner’s “All-American” persona by making him a fish-out-of-water in new and uncharted territory: namely the streets of Paris, France, where he goes to reconnect with his ex-wife (Connie Nielsen) and teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld).
“People…they look at me, and they don’t wince when they say, ‘American. He’s an American,'” said Costner, who made his mark in such distinctly American films as “Dances with Wolves,” “Field of Dreams,” “Bull Durham” and “JFK.” “Now I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it could be because I make cowboy movies, and baseball movies, and…I do…I feel like I’ve bounced around. But nobody seems to confuse me for anything other than, ‘He’s an American.’ And I’m okay with that. It hasn’t limited the things that I want do do or can do.”
To hear more from Costner, including talk of how we went to the same high school (albeit decades apart), click on the video above for the full interview.
“3 Days to Kill” hits theaters this Friday.