His marriage crumbled. His clout faded. His A-list status became questionable. But Kevin kept on coasting smoothly and is doing well again

USA Today

Washington

Even Kevin Costner has to laugh at the irony in sharing the back seat of a limousine as it cruises the streets of the nation’s capital.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” the actor asks as he climbs in. It’s his only reference to his legendary nighttime limo tryst in ‘No Way Out’, in which he and Sean Young frolicked as Washington’s illuminated monuments passed by. The 1987 movie, and that scene, made him a sex symbol. Costner, 48, 16 years later, is wearing faded jeans and well-worn cowboy boots.

‘Open Range’ is his third directorial effort. He also stars, as a cowboy. In 1990, he directed the Western epic ‘Dances With Wolves’, which collected critical praise, seven Oscars, including best director and best picture, and $184.2 million at the US box office. Less successful was 1997’s futuristic ‘The Postman’, an expensive bomb.

Along the way, Costner has struggled to match the string of hits of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s: ‘The Untouchables’, ‘Bull Durham’, ‘Field of Dreams’, ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’, ‘JFK’ and ‘The Bodyguard’.

With ‘Dances With Wolves’, he got a reputation in Hollywood as a visionary perfectionist. But that had a downside: Remember ‘Waterworld?’ Or his producing effort, ‘Rapa Nu’, which made less than $1 million?

“I do feel out of step with conventional filmmaking. I’m not a speedy guy,” he says. “I don’t care so much about the box office, and I do have the ability to pull off a good movie that can last 10 years on the shelf. So the things that drive me I know are out of step. I get it. I know that.”

He’s out of step again with his latest effort, a traditional Western with no sex or expensive special effects. ‘Open Range’ quietly tells the story of two older cattle-driving cowboys, Costner and Robert Duvall. Together, they battle nature’s elements and a dishonest lawman (James Russo).

In ‘Open Range’, close-ups exaggerate the rough faces of the aging cowboys. In person, too, Costner is beginning to show his age. Gray strands of hair may soon outnumber the blond ones, and deep lines suggest a life full of laughter.

“I embrace the idea that I’m going to get smarter and obviously older,” he says.

Plastic surgery is not for him, he says, despite a new generation of younger leading men. “I think in this life that you never say never, but I never felt the need for it,” he says, laughing.

He doesn’t knock surgery for actors who think they need it to keep a competitive edge. “People have certain feelings, and mine don’t run in how I look. I have my own demons, but they’re not that.” Besides, he prefers “to look older than my children.”

Kids. Now there’s a body of work Costner is proud of. Annie, 19, attends an Ivy League college. Lily, 17, who plays varsity basketball, and Joe, 15, a budding songwriter, are in high school. They had small roles in ‘The Postman’, but the Costner teens aren’t pursuing the Hollywood dream. “They’re just enjoying being kids, and there have been opportunities, but we haven’t seized on them,” says their dad. “I’m not as interested in what they become as I am in who they are.”

In 1996, Costner admitted to fathering a fourth child, Liam, now six, with Aspen socialite Bridget Rooney, niece of Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney. It was a difficult point in his life that he calls “a very tender time.” While he won’t discuss the arrangement he has with Liam’s mother, he says the “relationship (with his son) will evolve.” The fast track to sexy stardom was said to be a factor in his 1994 divorce (and reported $80 million settlement) from Cindy Silva, his college sweetheart and mother of his three older children. After 16 years of marriage, Costner earned a tabloid reputation as a womanizer, a charge the actor denies.

“Probably the best person to talk to if you are a man is a woman,” he says. “So flirting is a strong thing to do.” He admits to being “flirtatious, but I’m not a womanizer.” Besides, he adds logically, “There’s a lot of women who’ve flirted with me. It’s not a one-way street, you know. It’s not like I’m walking around, going, ‘Hey, flirt with me!’”

Costner says he’s a “one-woman man” who has been blessed to have found love twice. This time it’s with Christine Baumgartner, 29, whom he plans to marry next summer in Aspen. The actor and the model met four years ago on a golf course but split briefly last summer amid reports that he had a new girlfriend.

It’s “interesting,” he says, that his fiancee is nearly 20 years his junior, because the women he dated after his divorce were mostly around his age. But Baumgartner is the only woman he introduced to his kids.

“I didn’t know if the love was going to come to me. I was certain it wouldn’t,” he says. He met some really “wonderful” and “great” women, but he wasn’t willing to “do the dating thing.”

Facing 50, with kids who are growing up and a new marriage on the horizon, Costner says he is considering changing his longtime living arrangements. Cindy and the kids live in Santa Barbara, to be near his place in Hollywood Hills.

“It’s probably going to shift as the kids find themselves in college. LA is not my favourite place to be,” he says. “It doesn’t really fit into my lifestyle. I dive. I scuba. I spearfish.”

His next acting gig is ‘The Upside of Anger’, a divorced-mom drama about to film in London with Joan Allen and Mandy Moore. Talks also are going on for him to star with Michelle Pfeiffer in a romantic comedy, ‘Taming Ben Taylor’.

If he were to leave Hollywood, the star thinks he’d do just fine. There are people in Hollywood for whom he has much respect and is friendly, but there also are school chums and ranch workers who fill his life. “It’s not an A-list of people,” he says. “It’s just my list.”