It's been pretty hard to get Kevin Costner off his back porch these past few years. It's in Aspen, so we kind of understand. He's been raising three children under the age of 10, with his second wife, Christine.
"Half my life is driving kids to practice," he jokes.
There were the business ventures - one of them Ocean Therapy Solutions, an oil spill cleaning system - became famous thanks to the BP oil spill. Another, ArmStar, is a non-lethal weapon he's selling to the Pentagon that could allow the military and police to pacify violent situations without killing anybody.
"A lotta fascinating (stuff) happens on my back porch," Costner says with a laugh. "And I've never been a guy who makes movies back to back to back. I love movies, love acting, love directing. Hell, I even love rehearsing. But I have a more full life than that."
At 59, Costner still fits the description film scholar David Thomson gave him in 2002's Biographical Dictionary Of Film: "He is not like others - he has resolved not to be."
But the 2012 cable TV miniseries Hatfields & McCoys reminded us Costner is out there. He gave heart to the special effects-burdened Man Of Steel, and grizzled gravitas to Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
In 2014, Costner will appear on US screens in two sports movies, Draft Day and McFarland. There's also Black And White, a film with his Upside Of Anger director, Mike Binder.
"I financed it, and it deals with racism," he says. "You don't do it just for the money, because God knows you don't put your own money up for movies about racism."
But first, there's 3 Days To Kill, a gonzo action comedy from the writer-producer of The Transporter movies. Costner plays CIA contract killer Ethan Renner, a "cleaner" who learns he's dying of cancer. His new control agent (Amber Heard) bribes him with a serum that might prolong his life, providing he carry out one last series of hits in Paris, where his estranged wife (Connie Nielsen) and the teen daughter he barely knows (Hailee Steinfeld) live.
"I like Ethan's directness - in his job, and how discombobulated he becomes trying to deal with the women in his life," Costner says. "We played those scenes fun, because he's struggling."
Costner says he likes that this character hasn't a clue about women - especially teenage ones.
"Welcome to the human race," Costner laughs. "If you know a lot about women, please write that book. For the rest of us. Give us a hand."
Costner shows every wrinkle, every grey hair in 3 Days. He may be "a national treasure", as his director, McG (Charlie's Angels), declares. But he's not shy about showing his age, in character and out of it.
Costner wanted to play a man who is "wed to his job" and who has paid the price for that. He wanted to play a dying man who does what guys sometimes do in that situation.
"He wants to earn a lot of money, doing these last few jobs, so he can leave his family something. If he can't leave them memories, he'll leave them money."
Not that this explains Costner's own suddenly full movie dance card. He'll admit he's in "the second half of my career" but don't measure him for a coffin just yet.
And don't write off 3 Days as a morose thriller. No, it's got laughs. Ethan Renner is so out of his depth with his daughter that he interrupts "enhanced interrogations" to question family men from the terrorist underworld for child-rearing advice.
"Asking parenting questions of those guys? It's already funny," Costner says.
McG, who has a Terminator movie in his credits, wanted "a partner" on this venture in writer-producer Luc Besson's Paris, with Besson's French crew, French stunt drivers and French sensibilities.
"Costner's got an Oscar (for directing Dances With Wolves), so he's a pretty good director himself," McG (Joseph McGinty Nichol) says. "So I wanted a collaborator, somebody I could listen to. We're two American filmmakers, standing on Montmartre with an all-French crew, trying to find our way in a French-style action film - two fish out of water making a fish-out-of-water story."
The director and his star rewrote some scenes, giving a more tolerant American sensibility to Besson's bemused shots at French immigration policy (African squatters have taken over Ethan's apartment, and French law and the French cops give them more rights than the property owner), turning would-be torture scenes into low comedy. Again, these scenes don't play out the way you expect.
But then, Costner has always been drawn to the unconventional.
"Movies are supposed to make you glad you made them," Costner says, "because they're not what anybody expects."
*3 Days To Kill is released in Australian cinemas on February 27.
