The Oscar-winning actor and director, famous for starring in dozens of films, including Dances With Wolves, Bull Durham, The Bodyguard, The Untouchables, JFK and Hidden Figures, gallops into his first leading role in a TV series when Yellowstone debuts June 10 on the Paramount Network (formerly Spike).
In Parade’s exclusive cover story, he talks about starring as tough ranching patriarch John Dutton, about his long, successful acting career, his family and about his passion for making music. Read on…
Don’t Call Him a Cowboy. And don’t call Yellowstone a Western, even though it’s set in Montana, on a ranch and there are cattle, horses and fences… His character “is like a business CEO,” Costner says. “He struggles because he can’t deal with problems the same way his great-great-grandfathers did.”
His Favorite Westerns? They include John Ford’s The Searchers and the sprawling How the West Was Won. But he’s a purist: Real Westerns have to be true to the time, the place and the context. “A good Western is really hard to make,” he says. “You need to find the shadings between the black hat and the white hat.”
He’s With the Band. When he’s not making movies, he makes music with Modern West, the band he formed in 2007, which has performed at the Kremlin and on the Grand Ole Opry. “This has been life-altering for me,” he says, adding that fans shouldn’t read too much into the “West” part of the name. “Our songs are pretty Americana. I’ve never liked the name. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t even have one.”
Why He’s Not a Naval-Gazer. “I think it would be a mistake to stand back and look at myself,” he says. “I need to keep being relevant. I just keep searching for that next story that feels like a big secret you can’t wait to tell someone.”
How He Messed Up the Oscars? Find out at Parade.com/costner for the mistake he made on Oscar night in 1991.