Kevin Costner Takes On A Killer Role

In Addition To Playing A Murderer, The Actor-Director-Golfer Adds Another Hyphenate: Musician

(CBS)  The film's success gave him a lot of clout in Hollywood.

"Yeah, but I've always felt like I had a lot of clout, because I always felt I knew what I would say 'No' to. I wasn't walking around like a dumb ass saying, 'Oh, I have a lot of clout!' when I didn't. But I always felt that I had myself, and I felt like I had my taste, and I felt like I had the audience on my shoulder when I selected a movie."

He says that even applies to his much-disparaged "Waterworld," with Costner starring as a mutant who fights for survival on a planet where the polar icecaps have melted.

Costner laughed: "I really liked 'Waterworld,' and people around the world talk to me about it, 'We even like 'Waterworld.'"

But all those films took a toll on Costner's personal life. In 1994, his first marriage broke up.

Ten years later he married Christine Baumgartner. They have a new baby.

He says she told him, 'No kids? No relationship,' while they were on a romantic getaway.

"And it was everything you might imagine. You can make it X-rated, whatever, it was incredible. I can conjure it up even now — and my face is as red as your shirt — and as we were flying back she said, 'You know, if we're going to have more weekends, if we're going to have anything, you need to know that children's a big part of what I'm about.'"

Costner is close with his three children from his first marriage; his youngest daughter Lily came to watch him at the golf tournament.

But as busy as Costner is making movies...he still makes time for yet another passion:

His band, Modern West. Costner has recently started performing with some of the same musicians who were in a band he played in when he was younger. He says he knows that people may be skeptical about his music because he's a movie star.

"But the music kind of has to pass a test for me in order to want to share it, and I kind of, in my own mind, made up that the same way I do about the movies. I made up my mind that the music could hold them."

The music (and Costner) held them for two-and-a-half hours.

And the more you watch him, the more you begin to realize that whether it's music or movies, Kevin Costner is a born performer.

[jonas0419]

Does anyone know the name and writer of the song Costner was singing during the broadcast that made reference to "the Texaco Star?" Thanks!

[thisandthat1]

Too bad he got brainwashed into doing that piece of schlock fantasy, "JFK". Unfortunately, his true talent is picking lousy parts in bad films.