Putting his money where his movie is

Kevin Costner’s new “Swing Vote” tells the story of an apathetic man floating through life, happy to play whatever cards life hands him.

Costner’s approach to making the film couldn’t have been more different: Rather than watch the Capra-esque fable about a deadlocked election drift away, the actor stepped up to invest more than $21 million of his own money to finance it.

A-list actors are increasingly willing to defer their multimillion-dollar salaries to help get difficult movies made, usually taking a bigger cut of the film’s profits in exchange.

George Clooney slashed his fee for “Michael Clayton,” Sean Penn worked below his normal rate for the upcoming “Milk,” and Julia Roberts hardly got rich co-starring in the new independent movie “Fireflies in the Garden.”

There’s only a handful of top stars, though, who are willing to actually place their own money at risk. Mel Gibson most famously pulled $25 million out of his bank account to fund “The Passion of the Christ.”

Costner has one of the longest – and best – track records in that category.

Including 1990’s Oscar-winning “Dances With Wolves,” 2003’s “Open Range” and now “Swing Vote,” the 53-year-old actor-director has proved remarkably adept at betting on himself – though Costner says it’s not that much of a gamble.

“I do my own math, and I know at the end of the day what’s at risk,” says Costner, who both stars in and produced the film. “I don’t call it a roll of the dice. I call it a calculated risk.”

“Swing Vote” was a classic case of a movie caught for years in Hollywood’s slowly grinding machinery.

“It had been around, and some companies had tried to make it, but interest had waned,” Costner says.

He says he was struck by the film’s conceit: a working-class slacker in a small New Mexico border town who, thanks to a voting machine glitch, will single-handedly decide a presidential election.

When “Swing Vote” went slightly over budget, Costner kicked in an additional $1.3 million on top of his original $20 million.

But then Disney bought the film’s domestic distribution rights, and with other territories sold off, Costner figures that he’s now about $1 million in the black.

“Swing Vote” will have a tough time making much of an impact this weekend, against the “Dark Knight” juggernaut and the opening of “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.”

“I don’t make art that I can put on my refrigerator,” Costner says. “I want to make good movies that could potentially be a hit.

“But we’re going to do great,” he adds. “I own this movie for the rest of its life. And that’s like owning beachfront property.”

The birthday bunch

Singer Tony Bennett is 82. Actor Martin Sheen is 68. Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart is 67. Director John Landis is 58. Actor Jay North (“Dennis the Menace”) is 57. Actor John C. McGinley (“Scrubs”) is 49. Actor Isaiah Washington is 45. Actress Brigid Brannagh (“Army Wives”) is 36. Actress Evangeline Lilly (“Lost”) is 29.