Kevin Costner Was Too Embarrassed To Film One Steamy Movie Scene
Kevin Costner was too embarrassed to do a nude scene in front of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, so he used a butt double instead.
Kevin Costner used a stunt butt on the set of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. As TheThings reports, The Yellowstone star was too embarrassed to … er … bare ass in front of his Robin Hood costar Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The scene was instead filmed with a body double in Costner’s place.
The scene in question features Kevin Costner as Robin Hood bathing in a river as Mastrantonio’s Maid Marion looks on. The nudity in the scene is very PG-13, with Robin’s bare buttocks being the only NSFW element present. Apparently, the Tin Cup star wasn’t comfortable showing off his backside in front of Mastrantonio and millions of moviegoers despite doing it just a year earlier in Dances With Wolves.
Kevin Costner filmed almost the exact same bathing scene for the historical epic Dances With Wolves. Just like the scene in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Costner is washing up in a body of water with his bum on full display. The only difference between the two films is in Robin Hood, Marion watches like a creeper. In Wolves, an indigenous person comes across Kevin in his birthday suit and runs away, no doubt scarred for life by the experience. Otherwise, they’re exactly the same.
So why was the Waterworld star okay with showing his backside in one movie and not another? It could be that, for whatever reason, Kevin Costner was more nervous around his Robin Hood costar. There may, however, be another reason altogether: money.
At least one source has reported that the decision not to display Costner’s derriere in Robin Hood was a financial one. It is unclear whether Costner’s contract demanded that the star be paid more for nude scenes. There is, however, at least one other incident that would lend credence to the theory.
Several years after Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was released, Kevin Costner starred in another film called For Love of the Game. The baseball-centric film flopped when it came out in 1999 and is largely forgotten these days. According to Costner, For Love of the Game was supposed to feature something else flopping, so to speak.
Kevin Costner expressed anger in a 1999 interview that the movie was missing a scene featuring The Postman star doing full frontal nudity. Costner blamed Universal Pictures for not fighting the rating board to keep the scene in the movie. “They said it wouldn’t do any good… The love of the movies, I believe, is waning [in Hollywood],” said Costner, apparently comparing the lack of his penis on the big screen to Hollywood execs no longer having a passion for the movie-making craft.
Costner’s willingness to bare it all years after refusing to bare even a bit of cheek doesn’t mean that he wasn’t embarrassed on the set of Robin Hood, but it does seem a little sus. Regardless of why Kevin Costner used a body double for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it’s still an interesting bit of movie trivia that you can bust out at your next party or zoom gathering.
