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Passions of the A-List: When a star puts his money where his mouth is

By Patrick Kevin Day, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Kevin Costner kicked in more than $21 million of his own money to fund the comedy "Swing Vote." Putting money into any movie is a risky venture, even for a big media company. But despite multimillion-dollar star salaries, it's still fairly rare to see high-priced talent risk personal savings to bankroll a passion project.

These stars cared enough to fork over the cash and hope for the best. Sometimes it worked -- better than they would have ever dreamed -- while other times it resulted in little more than a very expensive memento of their hard work.