Kevin Costner Opens Up About Battling Illness While Filming ‘Hidden Figures’: “I Worked 10 Days on an IV Drip”
It takes more than a few kidney stones to keep Kevin Costner down.
The Academy Award-winning actor revealed that he “worked 10 days under an IV drip” while filming his role as Al Harrison in the 2016 biographical drama Hidden Figures, yet he “never missed a day of work.”
“I’ve never worked drunk on set, and I’ve never worked high, but I was on morphine for the last two weeks of filming,” Costner shared with People. He recounted, “I don’t even know how. For about three days, I felt normal, and then something changed.”
Between scenes, Costner spent time in his trailer with a morphine drip in his arm, ultimately having to roll his sleeves down to hide the bruising from the IV. “I wanted to cry, but everyone was watching, so I held it in,” he admitted.
Costner praised the experience of working with director Theodore Melfi and reuniting with his Black or White (2014) co-star Octavia Spencer. Based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book, Hidden Figures tells the story of three African-American mathematicians—Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Goble Johnson, and Mary Jackson—who played vital roles in NASA’s success during the Space Race.
Spencer received a Best Supporting Actress nomination at both the Academy Awards and Golden Globes for her role, while the film itself earned a Best Picture nod at the Oscars.
