Kevin Costner was the protagonist of last summer’s soap opera when his divorce from his second wife and mother of his three youngest children, Christine Baumgartner, to whom he had been married for 18 years, was announced. If his first divorce from Cindy Silva, his lifelong girlfriend, was already on the cover of all the media, this one was not far behind, with fights over his house and million-dollar pensions ($250,000 a month, she demanded) that They demonstrated the family’s stratospheric lifestyle. After finalizing their legal separation from him in September, Costner has been immersed in promoting his new project, a film saga called horizon for which he has mortgaged his properties and has invested close to 40 million dollars. Perhaps it is because of the need for publicity to recover his investment, perhaps because he wants to give his version of what happened, a year later, now Costner has sat down to chat with the magazine Peoplewhich dedicates its cover to him and places him at the top of a list called The 100 reasons to love the USA.
The actor and director now recognizes that being immersed in the making of this very demanding film saga took him away from his wife, physically and mentally, and that they could not overcome it: “We were not able to achieve it with the distance,” he explains, without wanting to get too deep into the topic. “It was my fear and now I am living with it. But it’s life,” he admits about divorcing a second time after a very long relationship (he married Silva in 1978 and separated in 1994). “There were a lot of things going on. I had that money there, those films were already committed, there were 300, 400 people working on them,” he explains. “If you’re in a storm and you’re the only one on deck holding the helm, and you’re trying to wash the rain and salt water out of your eyes, you can’t let go of the helm. “I haven’t been able to let go of the helm.”
However, he describes his ex-wife as “a good partner and a good mother.” “It’s all for the children,” she now says about her separation from Baumgartner, to whom she pays a pension of $63,000 a month to support the three minors. “You do. You keep talking, you keep helping them, you keep taking an interest in what they are interested in,” she says about how she handles her relationship with the little ones. “I’ve already been divorced once and it was hard on the kids,” she explains, hinting that she knew another separation could be hard again. “It was something I had to think about 20 years ago, when I agreed to get married [de nuevo]”.
Costner confesses that his children are his priority. He has seven: Annie, 40, Lily, 37, and Joe, 36, the result of his marriage to Cindy Silva; also Liam, 26, who was born after a brief romance with dancer Bridget Rooney; and the three little ones with Baumgartner, Cayden, 17, Hayes, 15, and Grace, 14. The three of them are his priority now, he says, recognizing that his life is “driving up the highway, down the highway trying to take the children where “They think they have to go… but it’s part of the job.” The boys live in the city of Carpintería, a small town next to Santa Barbara, two hours from Los Angeles. There they play sports, have horses and live in their four-hectare mansion with an infinity pool and a volleyball court, among other amenities. As Baumgartner said in his hearing with the judge, the life of luxury is “in the DNA” of the boys, which is why he needed a million-dollar pension (he started asking for 250,000 dollars a month, lowered his demand to 162,000 and finally achieved 60,000 a month). .
In addition to the interview with People, Costner gave another one Tuesday night on Howard Stern’s show, who asked him about a curious rumor that has been circulating in Hollywood for a few months: his relationship with the singer Jewel, 50 years old and born in Utah, with whom the press He has been relating to her since December of last year. The folk singer herself already went through that question in another interview in April with the magazine elle and she threw things out, without being clear in her response (“He’s a great person. I’m sure there’s a lot of fascination on the part of the public”), which only added fuel to the fire. He, on the other hand, settles the rumors, explaining that he has been hearing them for a long time (and that even his young children have asked him about them) but that they are not true. “No, Jewel and I are friends. We have never gone out together, ever. She’s special, and I don’t want these rumors to ruin our friendship because that’s what we have. She is special for me”.
Stern asked Costner how this buzz started, and he explains that it was because they were both together on the island of millionaire Richard Branson, on a visit joined by actress Emma Watson and half a dozen other non-famous people. “I had a very long conversation with her and Emma,” he says, explaining that they both flew together on a private flight both there and back, and that he believes that from then on they began to bond. “I was with nine people and I don’t want the press to ruin this for us, because we have had text message conversations, she is very intelligent and has been through a lot, so we have a friendship. We don’t have a romance, and we haven’t dated,” Costner revealed. “She’s pretty and smart enough for those things.” [para salir juntos], but it’s just never happened. “It’s all you could think of, but it hasn’t happened.”
In the talk with People, the actor from Lynwood (a city just south of Los Angeles, California) also reviews his life and knows of his exceptionality. “I have had an incredibly unusual and, best of all, very beautiful life,” he admits. He says that when he left high school, being a mediocre student, and it was clear that he was going to be an actor, “there was no guarantee of success,” he acknowledges. “I had a big weight on my shoulders. I started going to Hollywood every day and parking my little trailer near a phone booth and sleeping curled up. Did not know anybody”. He was not an actor with quick successes: he started with minor roles at the age of 26 and succeeded already after the age of 30, especially thanks to his leading role in The Untouchables by Elliot Ness that launched him to stardom in 1987, already Dancing with Wolves, three years later. “What I can say is that I have had an incredible life,” she says. “I have been hit, but it has been incredible and I am grateful for that.”
