Cover Story : Costner Dances With Destiny : After a lengthy run of hit films and public acclaim, Kevin Costner is encountering very rough seas.

S trapped atop the boat’s mast 40 feet up, Kevin Costner looked to sea as the calm waters off the Big Island of Hawaii suddenly changed. As the vessel turned into the growing swells, the star of “Waterworld” slammed five feet in either direction, his body banging against the stuntmen nearby.

Most of the crew had already packed up for the day. Costner was left in his precarious perch , struggling against the elements. The strong winds and wildly rocking craft made it dangerous to lower him to safety. For 30 minutes, he was forced to ride it out.

When the day’s filming had ended, the exhausted star made his way back to his movie trailer. It had been too close a call--even for one of Hollywood’s biggest risk-takers.

“I nearly died today.”

His words to a close friend left a chill in the air.

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That moment of reflection came during one of the longest and most grueling productions in movie history. This, after all, was Kevin Costner, Oscar-winning filmmaker and one of the world’s most bankable stars, coming face to face with his vulnerability.

During the past year, Costner’s meteoric rise, built on critical and box-office smash hits, has come to a dramatic and unexpected halt.

From his role as the incorruptible Eliot Ness in “The Untouchables” to paid protector Frank Farmer, who would take a bullet for his love in “The Bodyguard,” Costner epitomized the flawed heartthrob, the complicated hero, the sensitive loner.

He could embody every little boy’s dream, pitching to the ghosts of baseball’s greats. He could pull audiences to the edge of their seats riding bareback into stampeding buffalo. He could paint the toenails of a woman and leave her yearning.

He also became a respected auteur , with “Dances With Wolves” (1990), which won Oscars for best picture and best director. The success of that film was doubly sweet for him, because he had to make it with very little support from a Hollywood skeptical of a three-hour Western with subtitles in Lakota Sioux.

Such conviction would set the tone for Costner, who became known as a huge risk-taker, a man who could trust his own instincts and not be swayed by naysayers. He persuaded Warner Bros. to take a chance on Whitney Houston, who had no acting experience, to co-star in “Bodyguard,” a venture the studio considered dicey. The film ended up grossing nearly $400 million worldwide.

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But Costner’s stubborn streak has also cost him. When he has deviated from the character traits familiar to his audience--as he has in the three films released in the past year and a half--fans, exhibitors say, have responded loud and clear: Forget playing escaped convicts (“A Perfect World”), ditch dying dads (“The War”) and nix those heroes with a bad attitude (“Wyatt Earp”).

“You can’t blame stars for wanting to try other roles,” says one exhibitor. “But guys like Costner have a certain image in the public’s mind, and when they try to alter that image, they’re playing with fire.”

Now, the star is rolling the dice on his biggest gamble to date, Universal Pictures’ “Waterworld,” with a record budget of at least $175 million. His recent misfortunes could change abruptly if the sci-fi action adventure becomes a hit when it opens on July 28.

Such professional pressure would be tough under any circumstances, but the 40-year-old Costner is facing them as his very carefully crafted image as one of Hollywood’s biggest family men is falling apart. He was recently divorced from his wife of 16 years, Cindy, amid rumors of infidelities on the set of “Waterworld,” giving her an $80-million settlement and their jointly owned restaurant in Pasadena, Twin Palms. Native Americans he befriended in South Dakota during the filming of “Dances” are now grumbling over a plan by Costner and his brother to obtain sacred Indian land in the Black Hills for a casino.

And Warner Bros., longtime home to his Tig Productions, says that there are no feature films for Costner close to production at the studio. His next announced projects, in fact, include an HBO adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “The Kentucky Cycle,” and a Broadway musical he has commissioned that he would star in.

Like Mariner, the mysterious gilled figure he plays in “Waterworld,” who navigates across a drowned world, Costner is now trying to chart out his life. His inner circle of buddies, who dub themselves the Ride-Back Gang, say they are stunned and saddened at the sudden and brutal turn that public perception has taken.

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Go the distance.

--The Voice, “Field of Dreams”

Heading for a plane last summer that would take him to the Hawaii set of “Waterworld,” director Kevin Reynolds turned to a colleague and remarked, “I’m going to hell.”

“Waterworld” would be Reynolds’ and Costner’s fourth movie together in a decade. Their friendship, which began in 1985 with “Fandango,” a movie that got Costner noticed in Hollywood, collapsed with “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” in 1991, when Costner reportedly strong-armed his way into the editing of the film, showcasing his own character, infuriating Reynolds.

Neither Costner nor Reynolds would be interviewed for this article, but those who know them say that Costner likes to assume a father-figure role, seeing potential in Reynolds and wanting to nurture it; Reynolds’ friends say that he gave Costner his break and helped him when he needed a few directing pointers.

“Sometimes they remind me of John Ford and John Wayne--same first names, each stubborn, with strong personal visions,” said Mike Simpson, a senior executive at the William Morris Agency and Reynolds’ agent. “Like Ford and Wayne, they’ve run hot and cold, but in the creative friction, good work’s been done.”

The “Robin Hood” rift continued until Reynolds, who had signed on to direct “Waterworld” for Universal, was asked by the film’s producers to meet with Costner about starring in the movie.

Reynolds was reluctant, and had even specified in his contract that he would direct any star but Costner. Costner, unaware that Reynolds was already attached to the project, had been jockeying for the role when it was still at Largo Entertainment, run by producer Lawrence Gordon. It was Gordon who wanted Costner to star.

“Larry starts laughing, practically falls off his chair,” one source recalled. “He tells Costner he is the one guy who can’t star in it because Kevin Reynolds is directing it and, ‘He doesn’t like you!’ He says to Costner, ‘He thinks you (expletive) him on “Robin Hood!” ’ “

Gordon passed the job of producing the film to his younger brother, Chuck, at Costner’s request. Then the Gordons set up a meeting between the two Kevins in Las Vegas, where Costner was filming “Bodyguard.”

“The moment they met, the fur began to fly,” the source added. “So, the Gordons go off to play craps and when they come back, Reynolds and Costner are in deep conversation about how they would shoot this scene and that scene, and so on.”

That truce lasted for a while. Costner went to Reynolds’ wedding. Reynolds enticed Costner to collaborate on an exotic idea for a film set on Easter Island. “Rapa Nui,” however, was a $26-million fiasco for Costner’s Tig Productions last fall. It led to a split between Reynolds and Jim Wilson, Costner’s producing partner, and alienated Reynolds from Warners, which released the movie.

“Waterworld” appeared to be a safe harbor, since Universal was helming the project and it would be an action-filled summer movie. It would not only pull in audiences of all ages, but almost guarantee plenty of marketing tie-ins.

But the filming proved to be anything but smooth sailing.

“Logistically, it was just awful,” said a key crew member who, like everyone on the project, spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

There were 50 boats ranging from jet-skis and catamarans to 150-foot ships. In addition to the principal cast, there were 55 stuntmen and, on some days, 500 extras.

Virtually all the filming occurred in the ocean off Kawaihae harbor, on the north side of the island of Hawaii. The choppy seas, scorching sun, shifting gusts of wind and the threat of a hurricane made filming chaotic.

“By the time we got to sea, the weather had changed and we’d have to come back to a covered set,” said one crew member. “We might get one good shot and be happy to get it. That probably happened 15 times.”

Filming on water is perilous on productions because of the changing winds and the constant movement of the currents, which affect the setup of the shots. Universal is well acquainted with those problems since it was the studio that made “Jaws,” a film whose budget doubled because of difficulties in shooting on the ocean.

As the months limped by last fall and winter in Hawaii, Universal’s top brass fretted about the ballooning costs of “Waterworld.” Sources close to the director pinned the problem on a weak producing presence.

“(Producer) Chuck Gordon spent most of his time on the first half of the shoot making phone calls in his office” instead of keeping tabs on what the crew was doing, a source said. “Kevin Reynolds literally had to do a lot of the first assistant directing work, telling the crew they needed more smoke on certain shots, things like that. They didn’t have the best below-the-line crew and that was a major problem.”

It was executive producer Ilona Herzberg, some argue, who is the unsung hero of the shoot. She was a frequent presence on the set, providing the glue that kept the production from falling apart.

Chuck Gordon, who produced the movie with Costner and John Davis, bristles at the claim that he was lax in his duties. “Every production decision on this movie rested with me,” he said. “I was the final person. Ilona was a tremendous help and I fought to give her the executive producer credit, which she will now receive.”

Universal was so frustrated that, according to several sources, the studio called Costner’s partner, Wilson, and asked him if he would replace the Gordons for a $1-million producing fee. Wilson, soured by the experience with Reynolds on “Rapa Nui,” declined the offer, says a source close to the situation, although Wilson denies it. Gordon and Universal executives say they are unaware of any such overture.

As anxiety mounted, Universal pressed Costner, who was be ing paid $12 million up front plus a cut of box-office revenues, to take a stronger hand.

One day, Costner was standing in shallow water next to young co-star Tina Majorino, waiting for direction from Reynolds.

“You could feel the tension because the little girl was being stung repeatedly by jellyfish and she was ready to get out of the water,” a key crew member recalled. “I remember Kevin Reynolds saying, ‘Left! Left! More left!’ He was trying to get Kevin back into the frame. It was tight.”

Costner suddenly shouted at the director: “What do you mean ‘left’?! Camera left?! Real left?! I can’t understand what you are saying!”

With that, Costner--known for difficult behavior on sets anyway--bolted out of the water and stormed off, as Reynolds pleaded with him: “Kevin, come on. . . .”

“They were tired,” says another highly placed production source, who was in Hawaii for most of the shoot. “It was exhaustive. They would disagree on some things and it was usually late in the day when they would snap.”

On most days, sources said, the Kevins seemed to tolerate each other. If a scene was successfully filmed, Costner would block out the next one or retreat to his trailer or the luxury motorboat Universal leased for his personal use. At night, he would stay at an $1,800-a-day oceanfront villa at the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel, with private pool and butler.

Stories began appearing in the press: “Waterworld” was a runaway project, a massive money-loser in the making. Tabloids made it seem that Costner and company were throwing money away like drunken sailors, dining on lobster flown in from the mainland. And it became widely reported that he was having an affair with a married hula dancer.

As the production wound down, Costner knew it was he who would be branded by “Waterworld’s” outcome. The studio, not Reynolds or Costner, will have final say on the film. The director’s contract specifically states “final cut shall not be assigned to . . . Kevin Costner.”

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If you build it, they will come.

--The Voice, “Field of Dreams”

It wasn’t an easy road coming from deepest Orange County to being one of Hollywood’s biggest draws.

In the mid-’70s Costner, who grew up in Southern California, was a business administration major at Cal State Fullerton. “Smokey,” the name Costner’s Delta Chi brothers gave him after playing Smokey Bear at a children’s hospital event, was known more for his athletic talents than his studies. He still loves fly fishing, flying in his private Gulfstream II to the remote, pristine wilds of Alaska, Montana and elsewhere.

“Let me just say that you had to maintain a 2.0 grade point average,” says former fraternity brother Craig Cessna. “He had to take a lot of econ and math classes that were tough for him and we had tutors in the house. But we all worked the system. We kept tests of certain professors in the house, so you knew which professors to sign up for, if you know what I mean.

“(Kevin) was a skinny little runt, just over six feet and weighed about 150 pounds. We were all pretty geeky. He had dates--but he was crazy about ‘Snow White.’ ”

Costner met the raven-haired Cindy Silva--a biology major, member of Sigma Kappa sorority and a little sister to Delta Chi, who would later become a homecoming queen nominee--while she was playing Snow White at Disneyland in the summer of ’75.

He was completely intoxicated by her, and they wed in 1978. They spent their honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta with the help of a $150 loan from John McInnes, who met Costner when Costner was working on a construction job in Laguna Beach. McInnes, who became an architect, would later design the Costners’ La Canada home.

McInnes and Costner also shared their first acting class, in Laguna Beach.

“We started going out for coffee and realized we both wanted to be actors,” McInnes said. “I remember Kevin was so determined to break into the business that, at one point, he wrote something for one of the ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ movies and sent it to Burt Reynolds.”

The class lasted about five months. “We were doing a part from ‘The Glass Menagerie’ and when he went up on stage, that kid had something. It gave me goosebumps. He told me, ‘John, I’m gonna make it big on the silver screen.’ He went home and told Cindy, ‘Get used to eating pork and beans--I’m gonna be an actor.’ ”

He knew that to be an actor he had to leave Orange County and start networking in Hollywood. One of his first stops was working as a grip at Raleigh Studios. He would spend as much time as he could reading scripts and auditioning for movie parts.

Because he had yet to land a speaking role, Costner couldn’t join the Screen Actors Guild, which would have given him a shot at higher-paying union roles.

One day, he auditioned for the part of Jessica Lange’s brother in the 1982 movie “Frances.”

As he walked out of the audition, Cindy Costner ran up to him and asked, “Did you get it? Did you get it?”

“No,” he replied. When asked why he didn’t, Costner, ever the perfectionist, told his wife that the dialogue “isn’t what the brother would say.” Costner eventually landed another bit role in the movie.

Friends say that Costner was always talking about cowboys and Indians. In the late 1970s, McInnes recalled, Costner’s favorite movie was the 1962 epic “How the West Was Won.”

“He was always telling me about how he thought the Indians got screwed,” McInnes recalled.

Some people to this day think Costner’s big break in movies was in director Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 baby-boomer movie, “The Big Chill.” Costner played the deceased Alex, whom the story revolved around, but Costner was never seen on screen except for his corpse’s being dressed for the funeral under the main titles.

“When he got back from ‘The Big Chill,’ he was so disappointed, very frustrated,” McInnes said, quoting Costner as saying, “I don’t know if I can make it.”

Undaunted, Costner continued to mine scripts, taking the advice of Kasdan--by now a friend--to be selective and heeding his words “Less is more.”

That’s when he took a commercial for Apple computers. It made for a brief television career, but gave him great exposure in Hollywood.

By the mid-’80s, Costner began to cull the relationships that would resurface later in his career. These ranged from directors Kasdan (“Wyatt Earp”) and Reynolds (“Robin Hood”) to his longtime business partner Wilson.

Costner began getting small roles in films such as “Stacey’s Knights,” “Table for Five” and “Testament.” It was in the B-movie “Stacey’s Knights,” in which Costner played a gambler killed by casino goons, where he first teamed up with director Wilson and screenwriter Michael Blake. The trio would later reteam on “Dances,” which Wilson produced.

The Apple commercial also led to his audition for Reynolds in “Fandango.” “Waterworld” seems likely to be their last collaboration.

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I was greeted with smiles and appreciation. . . . In short, I’ve become a celebrity.

--John Dunbar, Kevin Costner’s character in “Dances With Wolves”

Those who really know Costner know the Ride-Back Gang.

This inner circle of Costner loyalists isn’t a club or a fraternity, explained producer Armyan Bernstein (“The Commitments”), one of the select group; it’s just a term to explain the bond among them.

In TV Westerns, Bernstein said, there is always a cowboy who rides back to save his comrade shot out of the saddle.

“Kevin Costner absolutely rides back for you,” Bernstein said. “He is a ride-back guy.”

But there are others who say he would keep on riding.

Just ask the Native Americans in South Dakota who befriended him on “Dances With Wolves”--even making him an honorary Lakota--and cooperated in his upcoming CBS documentary “500 Nations” but who now are complaining about his plans to build a resort in the Black Hills. They call him a hypocrite because “Dances” made him rich by portraying the Indians’ plight, yet he now plans to profit off federal land they have fought to reclaim.

It is the same Costner they had considered their defender. An outraged Costner once kicked a fire marshal off the “Dances” set in South Dakota after the marshal selectively ordered Native Americans--not white crew members--to stop smoking. “Get out of here!” Costner shouted. “These are my people!”

On “Bodyguard,” Costner and Kasdan, who had written the script years earlier for Steve McQueen--whom the actor Costner idolizes--grabbed editing control of the film from director Mick Jackson, locking him out of the cutting room.

Warner Bros. and Costner supporters say their behavior was justified because they salvaged what looked to be an MTV-like movie and transformed it into a blockbuster.

Jackson declined to comment on the incident except to say, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” adding that he would never work with Costner again.

Costner’s irascible behavior repeated itself again on the set of Clint Eastwood’s “A Perfect World,” in which they both starred.

One Hollywood insider recalls a story about Costner and Eastwood that continues to circulate today:

“Kevin refused to do a scene and went into his dressing room and slammed the door and no one came after him. After two or three hours, he came out and came back to the set and discovered that Clint was still filming. Kevin asked why, and Clint told him: ‘You weren’t here. You didn’t want to do it, so I used your double from the back.’ ”

And kept on shooting.

Eastwood declined to comment.

Costner’s friends are quick to deflect the arrows. They say he is being unfairly judged for movies in which he did not exert total control.

“Any movie that Kevin Costner is in now, he’s the star of the film--not the director and not the studio,” Wilson emphasized. “It becomes a Kevin Costner film. The studios let him take the heat.”

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Ease the pain.

--The Voice, “Field of Dreams”

Critics can be tough. But the toughest critics can be the fans, particularly when it comes to a star the caliber of Costner, his personal problems, his recent box-office misses and the troubles with “Waterworld.”

Don’t believe it? Tap into the America Online network for some really blunt reviews.

Consider these Online chatterings:

”. . . He’s been seen out in the bar scene. What’s this Brad Pitt look he’s got going? He’s too old to change his look to the grunge look.” (Caramel4fn)

“I am curious to see those webbed feet!” (Anne 1863)

Even Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” show on the Comedy Central cable channel managed to jump into the act March 30:

“I’ve heard a lot of people say, especially Angelenos, ‘You know this (O.J. Simpson murder) trial is costing taxpayers $4 million or $5 million.’ Well, I say, for the entertainment value we are getting every day on television, consider ‘Waterworld’ costs $170 million, and it’s a piece of crap!”

Asked if publicity over Costner’s recent divorce and reports of indiscretions with women could repel audiences, Wilson responded: “Absolutely.”

“Is he innocent? No,” adds Bernstein. “He doesn’t want to defend himself. He takes responsibility for what has happened.”

It’s not clear exactly what has happened, but published stories have linked him romantically with women ranging from the hula dancer to young actresses in his movies to Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn’s 27-year-old daughter, Kevin.

His allies downplay the reports, particularly about Wynn, a longtime friend of Costner whom he sees during golfing trips with her father at a private course in the Nevada desert.

But the stories and Costner’s divorce have unquestionably shattered the sensitive, family-man image his public has come to know through his films.

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I have just created something totally illogical.

--Ray Kinsella, Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams”

With “Waterworld” wrapped, where will Costner go from here? Even his close friends aren’t sure.

“He went from being the most godlike person to an actor who everyone is blaming for everything,” said one high-ranking studio executive. “I think anyone would have to think twice before hiring him at his quoted fee of $12 million again. He’s no longer in the ranks of Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Not everyone is counting him out. But there are no feature films for Costner that are even close to production at Warners, the same studio that profited enormously from hits including “The Bodyguard,” “JFK” and “Robin Hood.”

Unlike Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis--all box-office heavyweights known for retreating to the safety of sequels after experimenting in roles unfamiliar to their core audiences--Costner avoids encores. While that may be admirable for an artist trying to stretch his talents, it can also be dangerous to his commercial cachet and strain relations with studios that bankroll his big-budget pictures.

For this reason, Warners has offered Costner a “Bodyguard” sequel, but the actor, who is adamant about selecting his own material, has not yet committed. In fact, he is so independent that those closest to him say this nonconformist would walk away from Warners if he felt it were forcing any project upon him.

If a “Bodyguard” sequel doesn’t happen, Warners is hoping that Costner, a golfing buff, will commit to another sequel of sorts: Playing off his baseball hits “Bull Durham” and “Field of Dreams,” the studio wants him to consider “Tin Cup,” which has been described as “ ‘Bull Durham’ on a golf course.” Written by Ron Shelton, who wrote and directed “Durham,” “Tin Cup” is about a driving range pro from Laredo, Tex., who tries to impress a woman and decides to try to qualify for the U.S. Open.

That project, however, could put Costner in the uncomfortable position of competing against another high-powered actor-director-golfer at the studio, Eastwood, who is said to be considering a script tentatively titled “Golf in the Kingdom.”

And Costner’s plans to produce a film about Irish revolutionary Michael Collins--who founded the Irish Republican Army and later was assassinated--were thwarted recently when director Neil Jordan (“Interview With the Vampire”) got the nod from Warners to make a Collins film starring Liam Neeson. Neeson nabbed another role that Costner lobbied hard for--that of Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning Holocaust epic “Schindler’s List.”

I ndeed, Costner’s only an nounced project after “Water world” is a six-hour miniseries, “The Kentucky Cycle,” based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, for Warners’ cable TV arm, HBO. He plans to direct, star in and produce the program, which is tentatively set to air late next year or early 1997.

The HBO deal raised eyebrows in Hollywood earlier this year, since movie stars at the pinnacle of their big-screen careers as a rule do not take small-screen roles.

Nor do they sidestep onto the Great White Way. Costner has reportedly always fancied himself in a Broadway musical role such as King Arthur in “Camelot,” Costner’s favorite musical. He has commissioned a musical called “My Cuba” in which he would star as an American naval officer stationed in Havana singing his way through Castro’s revolution.

If that seems like a stretch, consider that in 1991, Costner released an album in Japan, crooning away on “The Simple Truth” under the alias Roving Boy. In his own voice, Costner seems to capture the turbulence of his own life today:

Listening to the stories

Of failures and successes

Knowing people’s happiness

Is delicately balanced

Pressures of the world

Press from all directions

Pushing us together

Pulling us apart.