Back In the Saddle

Can KEVIN COSTNER, with a string of bad films in his wake, make a good one? An epic western, no less? Yup.

I don't feel like a relic," Kevin Costner says over breakfast in a Manhattan hotel room. He doesn't look like one either. Fit and genial at 48, he moves or sits with the easy poise of all those athletes he's played: the hungry golfer in Tin Cup, the cyclist in American Flyers, the baseball veterans in Bull Durham (recently chosen by SPORTS ILLUSTRATED as the best-ever baseball movie) and For Love of the Game. His talk has a coiled energy as well. Sentences, packed with imagery and analogies, accrue momentum until he's created an aria, an oration on the fly. He...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!