In "Kevin Costner Presents: The First Christmas," the actor opens up about growing up in the church.

Before Kevin Costner rode into the sunset on "Yellowstone," earned two Oscars for “Dances With Wolves,” beckoned bygone baseball stars to a cornfield, or slept in a camper on Sunset Boulevard while dreaming of Hollywood fame, the seed for stardom was planted at church.

“I think I was about 4 years old when I was selected to be a shepherd in our church’s yearly production of the Nativity,” he says in ABC’s “Kevin Costner Presents: The First Christmas.” “Would be my acting debut, and I would have one line, ‘Hark!’”

The two-hour special premiering Dec. 9 (8 ET/PT and streaming the next day on Hulu and Disney+) splices a portrayal of Jesus’ birth with context from experts and commentary from Costner. Working on “The First Christmas” lit the actor up like a Christmas tree.

“We all think we know [the story],” Costner tells USA TODAY. “We all wait for this time of year and then we get mad at it, too, because now it’s ‘so much stuff I have to do, and I hate this.’ It's ‘too many people are coming to the house.’ There's this other story that changed the world, a lot of the world.”

“I was proud to be able to do it,” Costner, 70, adds. “I'm sure I'm going to confront the cynics and the nonbelievers, who I invite them to sit down, too, and they can feel how they feel. But I was really happy. This gave me pleasure to do it.”

The church Costner says his family helped build in the 1950s was his “foundation.”

“Our friends came from the church," he says. “The church was central in our lives.”

Costner’s grandmother served as choir director and his mom, Sharon Costner, lent her voice as a member. Sharon, who appeared in two of Costner’s films, “Tin Cup” and “For Love of the Game,” died in 1998. “I loved watching my mom sing,” Costner says. “I wish I could see her sing now.”

Her performances live in Costner’s memory and the church’s teachings in his heart.

“These fantastic stories of faith and of believing, it's nice to believe in something,” he says. “I’d hate to live in a world where I don't believe in anything.”

Costner steadily relies on his faith, even when − to borrow a metaphor from his beloved Western genre – life bucks him.

“We can’t always explain what moves us or what gives us this kind of determination or this faith that we will come out of this dark spot,” Costner says. “We can’t. We just choose to believe, and it’s something that has really sustained me.”

In 2023, Costner’s second wife, Christine Baumgartner, with whom he shares three children, filed for divorce after nearly 19 years of marriage. Professionally, Costner has been challenged on his conquest to make his four-part movie series “Horizon: An American Saga.” The release of Part 2 was delayed in 2024, and Costner has openly talked about difficulty in financing Chapter 3.

“I have had tremendous ups, and I have been bruised equally,” Costner says. “I've had things said about me that I know, you know − but I have to endure them. And so how do I choose to live my life, in anger or in faith that things will reveal themselves in the right way? And so I've just chosen to do that.

“But being a human, you keep thinking to God, ‘You need to hurry up, God. Listen, I've been praying for this for a long time. You got to pick it up a little bit.’ But we live with faith, so we're going to be tested. It’s just we're tested all the time.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kevin Costner kept faith amid adversity − 'We're going to be tested'

Reporting by Erin Jensen, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect