“I brought five of them and got them tuxedos, I bought them dresses. You know, I wanted to know … that they were going to stick with me and support me,” Costner said of bringing his kids to the Cannes premiere of his new film, ‘Horizon.’
Kevin Costner is opening up about his rare family outing at the Cannes Film Festival.
Costner dished on bringing five of his seven children with him to the premiere of his new movie, Horizon: An American Saga on Sunday, during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tuesday.
“I brought five of them and got them tuxedos, I bought them dresses. You know, I wanted to know … that they were going to stick with me and support me,” the Yellowstone alum said.
Costner posed on the French festival’s red carpet alongside daughters Annie, 40, and Lily, 37, whom he shares with ex-wife Cindy Silva, as well as his youngest children, Cayden, 17, Hayes, 15, and Grace, 13, whom he shares with ex-wife Christine Baumgartner. The 69-year-old actor is also dad to Joe, 36, from his marriage to Silva, and son, Liam, 28, whom he shares with ex-girlfriend, Bridget Rooney.
While the family photos were quite literally picture-perfect, Costner said their vacation to France didn’t exactly go to plan.
“The minute we got there, my two sons went fishing. My three daughters ended up on a boat, and said they’d see me around three or four o’clock … and then I get a call and they were drinking drinks at this point so they cruised in about eight o’clock at night,” Costner said. “I said, ‘We came to France to be as a family,’ 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.'”
Costner also took a moment to gush over his son, Hayes who he cast in Horizon.
“Listen, I know these parts are so important in people’s career, so I don’t just hand them out like candy,” he said of casting in the film. “It was something I could have him with me.”
Kevin stars as Hayes Ellison in the film, which he first started working on in 1988. After naming his son Hayes years earlier, he knew he had to have the teen take part once he jumped into production last year.
“In 2024, I’m finally making it. But I named my son Hayes. And he was 13 years old and I thought, I really have to make this movie. And I looked at him, and I said, ‘You know, I want you to be in this movie,’ Costner recalled. “It’s a devastating moment. It’s a moment you never want to have to experience, but the choice that he makes also will put a lump in your throat. When you see what he does.”
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He added, “And movies can be about that. They can. They can be about things we never, ever forget if you get them right.”
The Cannes audience seemed to think he did, giving Costner a 10-minute standing ovation when the film premiered on the Sunday.
“I really didn’t have a sense of what was going to happen. They [the audience] were very still for most of it,” Costner told Kimmel. “I actually started walking my life backwards for a second. I kind of went back to the beginning, wondering how I ended up at a place like that. We all have these dreams of where we want to be and I had my own and I’ve taken some really big bites out of life and life has taken some really big ones out of me. But I kind of just keep going and … they started the clap and it didn’t stop.”
While he was seen with tears in his eyes as the crowd applauded his first directorial turn in more than ten years, Costner insisted that he was not crying.
“I didn’t f–king cry. My eyes were full,” he quipped. “But I was moved by what happened in France. I was moved by the biggest film festival in the world.”
The first chapter in the Horizon saga hits theaters June 28, while Chapter 2 will be released on August 16.
