Kevin Costner Reflects on Rare Family Appearance at Cannes Film Festival: ‘I Wanted Them to See Me Work’
Kevin Costner has reflected on his rare family outing alongside five of his children at the Cannes Film Festival.
The actor, 69, commented on the experience during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday, May 22, revealing he wanted his children to see him work by bringing them along to the premiere of his new movie Horizon: An American Saga on Sunday, May 19.
“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.
The Yellowstone star 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.
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Costner detailed how the family vacation didn’t go precisely 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’.”
The actor, who cast his son Hayes in Horizon, which is released in cinemas on June 28, also spoke of the 10-minute standing ovation he received 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 Jimmy Kimmel, 56, before sharing further detail into the touching moment. “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.”
Although Costner was seen with tears in his eyes as the crowd applauded his first directorial turn in more than ten years, the actor maintained he was not crying.
“I didn’t f—king cry. My eyes were full,” he said with a smile. “But I was moved by what happened in France. I was moved by the biggest film festival in the world.”
The glowing response comes after a rocky year for the actor, who parted ways with Baumgartner, 50, after she filed for divorce to end 19 years of marriage in May 2023.
Us Weekly confirmed in May 2023 that Baumgartner had cited irreconcilable differences.
Their split got off to a messy start, igniting a four-month legal battle before the pair reached a settlement in September 2023. Their relationship was officially terminated, finalizing their divorce, in February.