Kevin Costner defends casting of female characters in his movies
As an actor, Kevin Costner has made plenty of movies that appeal equally to male and female audience members, but he’d be the first to admit that isn’t quite the case when he’s wielding the megaphone as director.
No stranger to an on-screen romance or two, Costner’s filmography makes it patently clear that he doesn’t have any issues catering to those demographics when his involvement is limited strictly to being a performer.
The two-time Academy Award winner smouldered opposite Sean Young in No Way Out, tugged at the heartstrings alongside Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham, generated sparks with Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard, warmed the cockles with Rene Russo in Tin Cup, and found huge box office success cosying up to Robin Wright in the otherwise-interminable Message in a Bottle.
That ability to weave between sports flicks, romantic dramas, rom-coms, and thrillers helped make Costner one of the biggest stars in Hollywood throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but things haven’t exactly been the same when he’s the one directing.
Dances with Wolves, Open Range, and the ambitious multi-part epic Horizon: An American Saga are all Westerns, while The Postman was a post-apocalyptic road movie. He didn’t need to spell it out, but Costner nonetheless felt compelled to explain that when he helms a feature, he isn’t doing it for the ladies.
“I make movies for men, that’s what I do,” he said to Happy Sad Confused, before clarifying that he always goes out of his way to craft well-rounded female figures in his screenplays. “But I won’t make a movie unless I have strong women characters. That’s how I’ve conducted my career. I think that’s why I have good following.”
There’s no denying that Horizon has a strong contingent of women among its ensemble, with Sienna Miller taking second billing behind Costner in the first chapter in addition to Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Ella Hunt, Isabelle Fuhrman, Dale Dickey and others.
Costner “just can’t conceive of a movie” that doesn’t have strong female characters who are integral to the story, even if they aren’t at the forefront of his thinking when he’s considering what kind of audience are most likely to show up to a feature where he’s pulling double – or triple – duty as leading man, director, and producer.
That being said, with Costner funnelling a huge amount of his own money into what he’s hoping will be a four-film series, he’ll be hoping every type of punter shows up in their droves.
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