Kevin Costner walked the Cannes Film Festival red carpet for his new western “Horizon: An American Saga” last weekend with five special dates: his children who range in age from 13 to 40.
“I wanted them to see me work. I got them tuxedos, bought them dresses,” Costner, 69, told Jimmy Kimmel this week of bringing Grace, 13, Hayes, 15, Cayden, 17, Lily, 37, and Annie, 40, with him on his work trip to the French Riviera.
The “Yellowstone” star’s other two children, Joe, 36, and Liam, 26, didn’t come with him.
Costner shares Lily, Annie and Joe with his first wife Cindy Silva, Liam with former girlfriend Bridget Rooney and Grace, Hayes and Cayden with second wife Christine Baumgartner, with whom he finalized his divorce in February.
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Kevin Costner five of his kids: Grace, 13, Hayes, 15, Cayden, 17, Lily, 37, and Annie, 40, on the red carpet in Cannes, France, last weekend. (Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
The 69-year-old joked to Kimmel he’d hoped his kids “would stick with me and support me” during the overseas trip, but “the minute they got there, my two sons went fishing, got a boat went fishing. My daughters ended up on a boat and said they would see me around 3 or 4 o’clock, me working, and then made a call, and they were drinking drinks at this point. They cruised in about 8 o’clock at night.”
He said he told his kids: “’We came to France to be as a family,’ and they go, ‘It’s working great, Dad. What do we do next?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. We need a tour director to figure that out.’”
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Kevin Conster with the cast of “Horizon: An American Saga,” including his son Hayes. (JB Lacroix/FilmMagic)
The star was able to wrangle his brood for the premiere, with the six of them walking the red carpet together: the boys in black tuxes and the girls in summer dresses in shades of blue.
Costner became visibly emotional sitting with his kids after the movie as he received a nearly 10-minute standing ovation.
The actor, who plays a character named Hayes Ellison in the movie, told Kimmel he asked his son Hayes to play a small part in the film.
Kevin Costner posing with his kids at Cannes last weekend. (Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
“I looked at him and I said, ‘You know, I want you to be in this movie.’ If you see it, it’s a devastating moment. It’s a moment you never want to have to experience, but the choice that he makes will put a lump in your throat when you see what he does,” he said of his son’s role.
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He told the press in Cannes that he self-financed some of “Horizon,” which is meant to be a four-part saga that “chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west,” according to IMDB.
Kevin Costner with son Hayes, 15, who had a role in his father’s movie “Horizon: An American Saga.” (Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
“I’ve knocked on every boat in Cannes to help me,” Costner said on Monday, according to Variety. “‘Oh come, we’ll have a picture. No, come get your checkbook out. Let’s talk money!'”
He added, “I don’t know why it was so hard to get people to believe in the movie that I wanted to make. You know, I don’t think my movie is better than anybody else’s movie, but I don’t think anybody else’s movie is better than mine. I don’t go out into the world with something I don’t think is good.”
He told Kimmel that he has been working to get “Horizon” made on and off since 1988, adding to GQ recently that he ultimately put up $38 million of his own money to get it produced.
“Horizon” became one the reasons he decided to leave “Yellowstone.”
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When it was proposed that the show’s fifth season was going to be split into two parts, Costner recalled, “I said, ‘I have a contract to do ‘Horizon,’ and I have people and money.’ I think there was a belief that I couldn’t get it mounted, but I didn’t really care what anybody believed.”