Kevin Costner was 23 in 1978, when he filmed his first feature, “Sizzle Beach, U.S.A.,” also known as “Malibu Hot Summer.” That’s one fact.

Another one: Kevin Costner looks right in a cowboy hat. There’s more to movie stardom than that, but with Costner, the hat may have had something to do with the stardom, which came a few years after “Sizzle Beach/Malibu,” which came from Troma, the trash-forward, money-optional film production company behind “Class of Nuke ’em High” and “Surf Nazis Must Die.”

Released in 1981, Costner’s debut feature follows three Los Angeles women, yearning for love, careers and meaning. The fifth-billed Costner plays the sole decent male in Southern California, a wealthy young stable owner sporting a cowboy hat. The hat has the added benefit of hiding the actor’s modified bowl haircut, which has not stood the test of time. But the actor has.

Ever since breaking through as the charismatic live wire Jake in his first real Western, director Lawrence Kasdan’s “Silverado” (1985), Costner has served as a genre ambassador and an advocate of the storytelling form. Now 69, he recently spent four increasingly contentious seasons on “Yellowstone,” settling scores and clearing the horizon of varmints anywhere near the Dutton ranch. Now, as producer, co-writer, director and marquee attraction, Costner’s the largely self-financed force behind a four-film gamble known as “Horizon: An American Saga,” set in the Civil War era.

Part One opens in theaters June 28. Costner and company return to theaters for the already filmed Part Two on Aug. 16. However these fare, he’s making two more. He has been filming Part Three for a while now. Like Costner’s own “Dances with Wolves” (1990), which won him Oscars for best director (first time out) and best picture, the script by Costner and Jon Baird devotes some acreage to First Nation characters and actors, though concentrating in the main on various groups of white men and women moving West.

Like the 1962 film that changed his young life, “Horizon” believes in an old-fashioned vision of the American pioneer spirit, without a lot of moral complication. Costner plays a loner and gunslinger, Hayes Ellison, who in Part One of “Horizon” takes on the role of protector of sex worker Marigold (Abbey Lee) and the newborn in her care. The filmmaker says he mortgaged his place in Santa Barbara to help finance the first two “Horizon” movies and their $100 million budget.

Early box office tracking data for “Horizon” hasn’t been great; same with the reviews coming out the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last month. Costner and distributor Warner Bros. Pictures figure the project’s best hopes lie with audiences outside New York and Los Angeles. The pre-release push involved Costner’s promotional blitz with stops in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Dallas. For the Chicago regional junket, the studio flew in and put up TV, radio and some print and online journalists from Cleveland, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Detroit.

“I’ve got so much at risk on this,” he told me during our interview at the Western-themed Frontier restaurant on North Milwaukee Avenue.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: You were filming Part Three of “Horizon” just last week?

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