"Dances With Wolves" | 1990 MGM

Kevin Costner's career is too vast to recount in detail, so we asked him about five moments from some of his biggest films.

The gunfight scene from "Open Range." This 17-minute "running battle" in director-star Costner's words that also features co-star Robert Duvall. Some western film aficionados have deemed it one of the best gunfights ever filmed.

"I kind of had it in my head — the way I wanted it to look, the chaos that goes on in a gunfight when everyone's close together, the tenaciousness and randomness of it all," Costner said. "I shot it over 12 days; I had to keep going back to other scenes in the film."

The golf superstitions scene in "Tin Cup." Co-star Cheech Marin, playing a caddy, cures Costner's case of the shanks in this scene by having him put all his change in his right pocket, tie his left shoelace in a double knot, turn his hat backwards and put a blue tee behind his right ear.

A friend, Costner noted, will do anything to help his buddy out of a slump; the best thing to do is not think about it. The hilarious scene is an example of the rapport between Costner and Marin, but Costner also gave credit to a third source.

"We had great writing," he said of the script from Ron Shelton and John Norville. "Our performances were handed to us, given how well it was written. Cheech is a very generous actor. We tried to, if you'll pardon the pun, tee it up as high as we could for the other in the film."

The buffalo hunt scene in "Dances With Wolves." Director-star Costner said he used a handful of cameras and shot it over six days, due in part to the fickle nature of animals.

"The first day, we didn't get any footage at all," he said. "We were told the buffalo would run one way, and they ran the other way."

Costner decided to go with the buffalo flow; at times, they'd run miles away. "We had to go out and get them with the trucks and helicopters. One day, one of the big bulls charged one of the helicopters."

Costner used animatronic buffaloes for the "kill" shots and attached arrows to live ones to make it look like they were running wounded.

New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's lengthy speech, near the end of "JFK." Costner played Garrison and, as hard as that speech looked, he said he had it down before filming ever began.

"I'm known as being off-book,' meaning I'll know all my lines before a movie starts," Costner said. "We shot it in about five hours; we were done by lunch. I was not having to start and stop. I think Oliver (director Oliver Stone) sensed that and wanted to take advantage of it."

Just about any scene from "Field of Dreams." "I knew when I read it that there was magic in that script," Costner said. "I also knew we had to run a thin razor's edge to pull it off — I mean, we have guys coming out of the corn and a guy having a catch with his dead father."

Many people don't view "Field of Dreams" as a baseball movie, and Costner agrees.

"I'm very proud of it. I think it's our generation's It's a Wonderful Life.'"