More to life
THESE past few years, it’s been pretty hard to get Kevin Costner off his back porch. It’s in Aspen, Colorado, in the United States, so we kind of understand. He’s been raising three children under the age of 10, with his second wife, Christine.
“Half my life is driving kids to practice,” he jokes.
There were the business ventures – one of themOcean Therapy Solutions, an oil spill cleaning system – became famous thanks to the BP oil spill. Another, ArmStar, is a non-lethal weapon he’s selling to the Pentagon that could allow the military and police to pacify violent situations without killing anybody.
“A lotta fascinating (stuff) happens on my back porch,” Costner says with a laugh. “And I’ve never been a guy who makes movies back to back to back. I love movies, love acting, love directing. Hell, I even love rehearsing. But I have a more full life than that.”
He still, at age 59, fits that description film scholar David Thomson gave him in 2002’s Biographical Dictionary Of Film: “He is not like others – he has resolved not to be.”
But 2012’s hit cable TV miniseries Hatfields & McCoys reminded us he’s out there. He gave heart to the special effects-burdened Man Of Steel, and grizzled gravitas to Chris Pine and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
April has the sports movie veteran in another sports movie – Draft Day. There’s McFarland and a film with his Upside Of Anger director, Mike Binder – Black And White.
“I financed it, and it deals with racism,” he says. “You don’t do it just for the money, because God knows you don’t put your own money up for movies about racism.”
But first, there’s this gonzo action comedy from the writer-producer of The Transporter movies, 3 Days To Kill. Costner plays CIA contract killer Ethan Renner, a “cleaner,” who learns he’s dying of cancer. His new control agent (Amber Heard) bribes him with a serum that might prolong his life, providing he carry out one last series of hits, in Paris, where his estranged wife (Connie Nielsen) and the teen daughter he barely knows (Hailee Steinfeld) live.
“I like Ethan’s directness – in his job, and how discombobulatedhe becomes trying to deal with the women in his life,” Costner