InStyle Magazine Interview

"Hi, Dad," 11-year-old Joe Costner calls as he bounds across the garden in a T-shirt and shorts, followed by Wyatt, Costner’s noble-looking yellow Lab. Young Joe heads his old mans way, filling his father's arms and rewarding him with an unembarrassed smooch. Next in line for a hug is Lily, 13. It's Monday, and she, Joe and sister Anne, 15, have just arrived with the nanny (they, alternate weeks between their father's canyon-view abode and their mom's house, 20 minutes away).

"Hey, how you doing?" the actor says as Lily proffers a hug "It's been too long!" He nuzzles her. "Seven days, that's too long. Let me look at you." As he does, his middle child grows shy not because he's Kevin Costner, but because he's Dad. Dressed in a white T-shirt, light-blue jeans and navy Pumas, the 44-year-old still displays the playful grin and athletic grace that helped make him a star in the late eighties. While there are glimpses of Costner, the actor-the driven Eliot Ness in The Untouchables, the idealistic farmer in Field of Dreams, the macho protector of The Bodyguard- at home, he is more apt to he a big kid one minute and the voice of reason the next. Anne has just come back from her first day of driving, class, and he cracks up when she shoves her face in his and says, "My teacher got this close to me and said, 'I want to tell You that your dad's the greatest actor ever,' and I was like, 'Okaaay…’”, But a moment later his voice drops to a confidential hush as he tells her, "I remember my driving class. They put these films on where it's all bloody-kids killed from drinking and stuff. It hits home, man. You realize in your quickness to want to get out there, mistakes that you can't come back from can be made."

Mistakes are something Costner has grappled with in his own midlife. In 1994 the making of his futuristic epic Waterworld in Hawaii was upstaged by reports of an out-of-control production and an overblown ego, as well as the breakup of his 16-year marriage to his college sweetheart, Cindy. Costner remained stoic throughout, even after the added drubbing he took for I997's The Postman, and was able to recoup some box office luster in 1996 with Tin Cup, as well as with this year's Message in a Bottle. His new film, For Love of the Game (opening September 17), returns him to familiar turf: He plays a star pitcher in the twilight of his baseball career trying to reexamine his life. Costner calls the romantic drama "fairly close to the bone."

While he has made mistakes, others have frequently been mistaken about him. He has often been seen as a political conservative, but the truth is, Costner is a registered independent who both golfs with George Bush and supported President Clinton at the last Democratic National Convention. And while he has been labeled by some as arrogant, that comes partly from having his own vision and the confidence to pursue it. "He's very strong in his convictions," says Kelly Preston, who co-stars in For Love of the Game "Yet he's always open to your point of view."

If his two Oscars for 1990’s three-hour-plus Dances With Wolves (best director and best picture) proved anything, it's that likes to challenge conventions-onscreen and off. "I have a western ethic," he says. "I don't like people litigating my problems. I think I know what justice is. I've never minded being alone.'

Of course, few people would mind being alone in the comfort Costner's Hollywood home. Four years ago, with Waterworld winding down and his marriage over, he knew he couldn't return the family homestead. So a diligent assistant found this 15,000 square-foot home (including a two-story guest quarters and gym), then owned by actor Richard Dreyfuss, and insisted that he rent it. The property was called Casa di Pace, Italian for House of Peace, and his first night there, Costner knew he had to buy it. "I thought it was going to be the loneliest night of my life, but I had the best sleep that I'd had in a long time," he recalls. "When everything should have been the lowest, the house took over in a way."

It also helped that the place received his kids' approval. “I was very anxious about how my children would feel in a new environment. So I studied them as they came up the driveway, and my son, who doesn't say a lot, looked around and said, 'It's a kingdom!' And I smiled and thought, I can make this [work]."

In 1995 Costner purchased the "kingdom." To make it his own, he enlisted the help of Jeffrey Beecroft, the production designer oil Dances with Wolves and The Bodyguard. But it was important to Costner that the home be more than a set design. "I didn't feel the house was open enough," he says. "I like when curtains blow into the house in an exotic way." So Beecroft enlarged the living and dining rooms and added a series of 10-foot windowed doors to catch the breeze off the Indian-slate terrace.

"I wanted it to have the romance of adventure and travel", says Beecroft, who drew further inspiration from two of Costner's other passions-hunting and fly-fishing. He found carved Balinese woods, black oil jars from Burma (which he stuffed with giant birds-of-paradise and palms), and African wildlife photos by Peter Beard (modern counterparts to the Edward Curtis photos of the Old West that Costner collects). "I wanted to be proud of this place," the actor says. "People think of me as purely American. I'd like to think of myself as a Renaissance person. I can't think of anything better [than being] open and ready to step through those windows of opportunity that present themselves."

Despite its size, the house conforms to Costner’s simplest needs. When the kids are away, he lives mostly in the kitchen, tile master suite (his unflashy wardrobe hangs behind apothecary style glass doors in a bi-level closet), and the art deco screening room (where another kitchen is hidden behind a retractable wall). "It feels like an apartment” he says.

When the kids are there, the whole place expands; they shoot billiards in the game room, soak in the pool and spa, plav tennis and basketball on the new sports court. For dinner, they’ll whip up tacos (with their dad's secret sauce) on the black Indian-granite kitchen counters.

Costner asked Beecroft to keep the children's wing softer in style, and he has fresh flowers delivered weekly genteel touch he learned from Cindy. As homage to his ex-wife, he had Beecroft find a wall-size vintage movie poster of Snow White (a character Cindy once played at Disneyland) for the hallway to the kids' rooms.

Growing up, Costner and his older brother, Dan, shared far simpler digs. Their father worked for Southern California Edison, and the family moved several times when Kevin was in high school. "My mom was always trying," he remembers. "When we lived in Orange County [outside L.A.], she had a living room where each wall was painted a different color-and it worked."

After he and Cindy, graduated from California State University at Fullerton and married in 1978, Costner got a job as a stage manager at Raleigh Studios while she worked in marketing for Delta Air Lines. They bought a two-bedroom bungalow in Pasadena. "We still have friends on that block," he says. "We still trick-or-treat there." In 1986 they built the Mediterranean villa near Pasadena where Cindy still lives. And, thanks to a string of hits including No Way Out, The Untouchables, Bull Durham, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and JFK-Costner was able to afford a beach property near Santa Barbara (Beecroft went "funky Japanese" there, though Costner now owns a different beach home in the area; and recently, the designer finished a four bedroom lake cabin for Costner near Aspen).

Costner creates homes the wav he creates movies: "I've dreamed these places in my mind. I believe in the power of a home-in a dialogue that takes place there, the formation of one's ideas." While he's determined that his other houses remain in the Costner clan for generations to come, his Hollywood home is more of a base "for what I've done in my life he says. "I've made movies. This is the home I could be very content to live my entire L.A. life in."

The actor has also forged a new friendship with Cindy. "If I had to trust somebody with something, I would ask her," he says. "She's strong and smart, and I know she cares about me."

Costner is not dating anyone seriously these days, and his escort to the Oscars in March was daughter Anne. She and his other kids are clearly a source of pride for Costner and his former wife. "We tell them every day that they're special," he says, "and in the same breath, we remind them that they ain't better than anybody."

As he and Joe chat by the edge of the pool, Costner realizes that his son's voice is starting to change. Such details don't go unnoticed; life passages stick with him. He remembers 20 years ago when, as a novice actor, he ventured up this canyon for a meeting. "It was hot and I couldn't figure out the road-and I remember saying out loud, 'I will never live in this place,' " he says. "And here I am, feeling pretty complete and happy. It shows you about life. It's where you think you are that makes you feel good."