Inspiring Words from Kevin Costner about McFarland, USA

It isn’t often you are in a room with a HUGE celebrity they are spouting off one line quotes full of inspiration and wisdom. That is exactly what happened during my interview with Kevin Costner about his upcoming film McFarland, USA.

Let’s be honest, Kevin Costner is a superstar, but the humility and wisdom that protrudes from him is amazing. I entered the room as a fan girl, but I walked out inspired and honored to have been involved in the interview. He is so much more than an awesome celebrity, he is an inspiring human!

So I want to share with you my favorite quotes from my interview with Kevin Costner in regards to McFarland, USA.

He started off talking about his life. Growing up he wasn’t very good at school, but when it came to recess and after school he was in charge of the direction of his life. He decided the best course to take is where he could be in charge or what he was doing so he would always be interested in what he was doing.

I wanted to be absolutely interested in everything that I did.

Kevin Costner has made sure that he was never too busy to take on little, but meaningful films like McFarland, USA. It turns out that since he grew up in that area that when he was in High School he played baseball again McFarland.

I don’t plan my life so much to the point that I miss something like McFarland, a little story about Latinos. I was able to participate in this movie and highlight a culture that we see all the time, driving down our highways, looking off to the left and right, and somehow we just keep driving, right? We’re not supposed to text and we’re not supposed to stop our car to look. But that is how the food gets to us… there’s little McFarland’s everywhere in America, you know, I like that.

Kevin Costner was very wise when speaking about the messages of the movie. In the film it isn’t just the finish line that matters for these kids. Jim White (played by Kevin Costner) effected their whole lives for the better. My favorite statement from Kevin Costner during the whole interview was this:

The same things that we offer our children, we shouldn’t be so ignorant to not offer up to ourselves.

He said we are not done. Though we may be farther along in life, we are not done. We can change course in our lives, follow our dreams and think big! We want the world for our kids, but we too can have the world!

My favorite and most meaningful part of the interview for me was the end. Please read his words. I don’t want to paraphrase because it was beautiful the way he worded this message.

The most emotional part [is] before the last race. They’ve gone from not knowing anything about what was possible to sensing that everything was suddenly possible, and what happened? They found themselves in the last race, and they saw the buses drive up that were bigger than their bus, shinier. They saw kids come out of the buses in uniforms that were better. The kids were bigger. So all of a sudden they started to shrink back. They started to go back in their minds to McFarland. They suddenly weren’t gonna be able to maybe compete at this level. And that’s where older men and older woman will always be at their most useful, to look at them and see the fear in somebody’s eyes, the doubt in somebody’s eyes and to say no, you belong here.

When you make someone feel like they belong, they start to feel like giants. It was all because somebody said it’s possible if you’re willing to work at it.

Let’s learn the lesson from McFarland, USA and from Kevin Costner. Let’s feel like we belong, become giants and be willing to work for our dreams!

McFarland, USA is in theaters February 20.

Read more about the rest of #McFarlandUSAEvent experiences!