Associated Press

Palm Springs, California

Kevin Costner said it was Richard Burton who inspired him to pursue an acting career. Costner was boarding a plane decades ago when he had a chance meeting with Burton and asked the actor if one could have an acting career without the turmoil that surrounded Burton’s life. “I think it’s possible. It hasn’t been for me, but I think it’s possible,” Burton told him.

The brief comment was the inspiration he needed, Costner said. At the Palm Springs International Film Festival he received the event’s Career Achievement in the Art of Cinema Award. “I would like to have a big fat hit,” Costner said, explaining, however, that he wasn’t willing to compromise himself for that hit. “Otherwise, I would be spitting on my life.”

“I’m not a fearful person and Hollywood operates on fear,” he said. “I would be afraid in Vietnam, on the beaches of Normandy, and I’d be afraid in Iraq. But I’m not going to be afraid to bring you an original piece of entertainment that I thought was worth fighting for.”

The 48-year-old actor-director-producer also spoke of his love for the Western genre, and he recalled watching ‘How the West Was Won’ at the Cineramadome in Hollywood when he was seven years old.

“I never moved... Westerns are probably one of the genres you watch and wonder if I would have been as brave as them or would I have been as resourceful,” Costner said.