Kevin Costner Reflects on a Scene He Wishes He Hadn’t Filmed: “It Feels More Like Sensationalism”

In the early 1990s, Kevin Costner’s rise to Hollywood superstardom finally reached its peak. After winning Oscars for Dances with Wolves, the actor—already beloved for roles in The Untouchables, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams—had become a bona fide A-list star. He was the kind of leading man that men admired and women adored, seemingly poised to conquer the world.

But there was a catch: Costner wasn’t entirely comfortable with the image Hollywood was crafting for him. Just before the release of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the much-anticipated follow-up to Dances with Wolves, interviews repeatedly mentioned his sour mood. His nerves about the film weren’t due to the harsh criticism of his English accent in tabloids, but stemmed from something else entirely.

Costner was frustrated with Warner Bros for marketing him primarily as a sex symbol, especially through the film’s trailer. The trailer notably spotlighted a scene where Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s Maid Marian glimpses Robin Hood swimming naked, with the camera lingering on Costner’s physique longer than he felt was appropriate. Costner revealed he had agreed to shoot the scene because, in the script, it wasn’t meant to be gratuitous or just eye candy. Instead, it was supposed to illustrate the physical toll Robin’s brutal quest for vengeance against the Sheriff of Nottingham had taken on him.

“There was a purpose behind that scene, which got lost,” Costner explained. “It’s not about titillation. The whole point was that when Marian sees him, she notices the severe scars on his back from his time in prison—and the camera never really showed that. From that moment, her perception of him starts to change.”

For Costner, the scene symbolized Robin’s physical and emotional wounds—a subtle but significant detail showing how much the character had been “disfigured, violated” by his journey. This added a deeper layer to the story that was completely undermined when the studio cut the scene out of context in the trailer. Adding insult to injury, Costner pointed out that the bare body shown swimming wasn’t even his—it was a body double’s.

Clearly, discussing his bare backside was not what Costner had envisioned when signing on for the film, and it’s easy to see why he regretted filming the scene. He admitted that the sudden fame after Dances with Wolves was overwhelming, calling it a “quantum leap” in public attention and acknowledging the unexpected ways it changed his life. One of those changes was accepting his new status as a sex symbol—a label that became inseparable from his on-screen identity, whether he liked it or not.

This uncomfortable reality contributed to the bad mood often noted by the press. One reporter even witnessed Costner glare at a group of middle-aged female fans politely asking for a photo. “OK,” he said through clenched teeth, “but can’t you see I’m being interviewed?!”