Kevin Costner is campaigning for older actresses in Hollywood. The Academy Award winner married a woman almost 20 years his junior in a lavish wedding ceremony last year, but he believes studios, producers and directors often get it wrong when they cast young actresses as love interests for older actors in films.
Costner, who turned 50 in January, said he had fought bitterly against the casting of young female co-stars in his movies when he did not think audiences would accept it.
"I'll have a knockdown, drag-out conversation over the age of an actress," Costner said in Los Angeles while promoting his new movie, comedy-drama The Upside of Anger.
Costner's love interest in The Upside of Anger is played by 48-year-old New York screen and stage actress, Joan Allen.
He pointed to Annette Bening, Susan Sarandon, Robin Wright Penn and Rene Russo as other co-stars in previous movies who matched his age.
"They've said to me 'We want to cast a younger woman'," Costner said of his discussions with film decision-makers through the years.
"I appreciate younger women, but I say 'I like Annette Bening. I like Joan Allen'."
Studios, however, were often "cowards" and went for the younger woman.
"I think they're fraidy cats," Costner said. "They make really bad decisions about movies that can't afford bad decisions in a certain part."
Allen, who in The Upside of Anger plays an outspoken, alcoholic mother left to raise four headstrong daughters after her husband vanishes, was first pick for the role.
Writer-director Mike Binder wrote it with Allen, a Tony Award winner and three-time Oscar nominee (The Contender, The Crucible and Nixon), in mind.
In the film, Costner, an unambitious radio announcer, begins a dysfunctional relationship with Allen's character when he discovers her husband is missing.
"We could have taken some of our top-flight actresses right now and put them in Joan's spot and it would have been a wrong move," Costner said.
Though he has defended Hollywood's older female stars, in real life he chose a younger woman.
Costner, who divorced his wife of 16 years, Cindy Silva, in 1994, met a then 25-year-old Christine Baumgartner on a golf course in 1999. Last September, Costner and Baumgartner were married at his Aspen, Colorado ranch with a guest list including Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, Bruce Willis and Oprah Winfrey.
"I don't know if there's anything wrong with a man dating a younger woman," Costner explained. "I married a younger woman ... in my movies I don't do that if it's not appropriate."
Costner said he had only ever loved two women in his life - Silva and Baumgartner. He has dated many women, but he said he purposely did not fall in love.
"There's some girls I could have loved, but I didn't fall in love with them," Costner confided. "To fall in love I think is a pretty easy thing to do. People do it all the time and I, for whatever reason, I always told myself to 'Wait, wait, wait'.
"You know how a dog can sometimes hear a high-pitched sound and no one else can hear? I think if you continue to fall in and out of love your senses can get dulled.
"You meet a new girl, then six months later it's bloody and you break up with them, then you meet another and break up."
In the period between his divorce and meeting Baumgartner, Costner attended plenty of red carpet events and parties with a beautiful woman on his arm, but he resisted serious relationships. This was largely to do with protecting his three children, Joe, 17, Lily, 19, and Annie, 21.
"I didn't want my children to get familiar with a woman and then have them say 'What? She's not in our life anymore?'," he said.
"I had to do outside-of-the-loop dating. That was my choice to say I'm trying to get to know this woman, not maybe in a traditional way, but outside of my children. 'Can I come to your house?' 'No not yet'.
"That can sound very cruel to someone.
"I had to say 'Look, my daughters are very protective of me. They are very tough those little girls'."
With his hair thinning and wrinkles more prominent, Costner realises the time could soon come where his use-by date for some roles and scenes expires.
At 50 he doesn't feel over the hill yet, but it is on his mind.
"There's the reality of how old I am and there's how I feel," Costner said.
"At a certain point maybe I'll have to look at the reality of what the screen actually looks like and go, 'I can't do that'.
"I'm 50 years old and when someone said 50 to me when I was 20, they looked ancient.
"I have to kind of watch this to make sure whatever I'm doing seems right, but right now I feel very comfortable taking a woman in my arms if the script calls for it."
- AAP
- The Upside of Anger is screening now.
