Kevin Costner played her dad in Field of Dreams, but Gaby Hoffman didn’t feel any love from the star when the cameras were off.
The former “child actress” — as she likes to be called — told Business Insider that there was “a lot of paternal energy” on the 1989 movie’s set, but not with Costner, now 69.
“I didn’t feel paternal energy from Kevin Costner,” Hoffman, 42, told the publication in an interview published on Thursday, May 30. “We’ll leave it at that.”
The classic film was based on the 1982 novel Shoeless Joe written by W. P. Kinsella. Ray Liotta starred as Shoeless Joe Jackson in the movie while Costner played a farmer named Ray Kinsella who builds a baseball field, which attracts a team of baseball playing ghosts. Hoffman was 6 years old when she played Costner’s daughter Karin.
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Hoffman gushed about working alongside the late Liotta in the film saying “every day” with him was her favorite memory. (Liotta died in May 2022 at age 67.)
“I just absolutely loved Ray. I was convinced he was in love with me, too, which, of course, he wasn’t, but he was just such a sweetheart,” she said. “I didn’t have a dad growing up, and there were just so many wonderful men on that set.”
The movie also starred James Earl Jones, Michael Milhoan, Steve Eastin, Charles Hoyes and Art LaFleur.
“Ray Liotta and, actually, all the baseball players, I would sit around and play cards with them and play catch with them,” Hoffman continued. “I sort of jokingly said I had a big crush on him, but I think I was really drawn to a kind of fatherly, protective energy that he had in spades. What a beautiful actor he was, too.”
The actress said she “never” saw Liotta again after the movie, however.
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While Hoffman seemingly shaded Costner’s fatherly demeanor, the actor is a dad to a large blended family offscreen.
Costner is a father to seven kids. He shares Annie, 40, and Lily, 37, and Joe, 36, with ex-wife Cindy Silva. He Bridget Rooney have one son, Liam, 26, together. Costner shares his three youngest children — Cayden, 17, Hayes, 15, and Grace, 13 — with ex-wife Christine Baumgartner.
Costner even cast the teenage Hayes in his upcoming Horizon: An American Saga, which is set to be released in four parts beginning this summer.
“I named him after the character I play in this. My character’s named Hayes Ellison,” Costner told Entertainment Tonight when discussing the film, which has been decades in the making. “And I named Hayes [after] that character. So, I was watching him grow up and I was thinking, ‘Man, I better get with it and make this movie!’”
