The performance Kevin Costner doesn’t want his family to see: “It’s got some nasty little bits”
A recurring theme in Hollywood is for actors who specialise in adult-oriented fare to occasionally detour into more family-friendly filmmaking so that their children can watch at least one entry in their filmography. Kevin Costner has made a few PG-rated films in his time, but there’s one performance he’d rather the kids didn’t see.
Some of his most famous films may not have been geared towards audiences of all ages, but they were still rated as such. Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Field of Dreams are three of his top-earning and most well-known pictures, all available to viewers of every demographic.
On the other hand, many of his other most notable outings, including The Untouchables, The Bodyguard, Tin Cup, Bull Durham, and JFK, were slapped with an R-rating for entirely justifiable reasons. Once he became a father, Costner knew he’d have to wait a while before he could properly introduce his children to the full scope of his back catalogue, and they could be waiting a while yet.
Despite spending the late 1980s and early 1990s as one of the highest-paid and recognisable leading men in the industry, there’s an entire generation who probably know Costner best from his recurring stint as Yellowstone patriarch John Dutton, which ignited his short-lived renaissance and won him a Golden Globe.
Ruling his family’s ranch, and beyond, with an iron fist, Dutton engaged in some shady, unscrupulous, and often deadly practices to safeguard his loved ones’ future, and he’s not ready for the Costner offspring to see that side of him. He knows it’ll happen eventually, though, just not yet.
“It’s too naughty for them to see,” he told Extra. “They probably do figure out how to see it. But it’s got some nasty little bits that are good fun for everybody else. Listen, a lot of my movies have those themes, so they’re going to find them in the course of their life. I hope they figure out what I’ve been doing with my life.”
As Kevin Costner’s kids, the light bulb will inevitably go off one day, and they’ll realise their old man is a pretty big deal, albeit not as big as he used to be. That said, Yellowstone was among the most-watched and talked-about shows on television throughout its five-season run, and it’s not as if his sprogs were in their infancy when it premiered in June 2018.
Costner has seven children who were born between 1984 and 2010, and three of them were at least 30 when he made his debut as the grizzled rancher. His youngest three were all welcomed after 2007, so an educated guess indicates that he wasn’t referring to all of them, unless his 30-somethings have a particular aversion to watching him navigate the pitfalls of running a sprawling operation on the open plains.
Then again, even if Yellowstone‘s foul language and burst of violence are too much for the youngsters to bear, it’d probably be more traumatising if he introduced them to the PG-13 rated The Postman instead.
