Kevin Costner Says He Makes “Movies for Men” But Always Strives to Include “Strong Women Characters”

Kevin Costner

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Kevin Costner knows his audience.

The Oscar-winning director attended a live taping of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, alongside his Horizon: An American Saga co-stars Sam Worthington, Abbey Lee and Luke Wilson. During the wide-ranging conversation, Costner opened up about writing fully fleshed-out characters, particularly women, that aren’t typically seen in Westerns.

“When you start writing you go, ‘Where’s the woman?’ It just drove the story in every plot line,” he said. “It just seemed to me to be so easy. I mean, I just hardly couldn’t conceive of a scene that didn’t involve women or a young girl raised by a strong woman.”

While castmember Sienna Miller wasn’t able to attend the podcast taping, Costner sang her praises, saying that she helped bring his characters to life through her “luminous” acting before expressing his typical film audience.

“I make movies for men,” he continued. “That’s what I do. But I won’t make a movie unless I have strong women characters, and that’s how I’ve conducted my career. And I think that’s why I have a good following. I thank you women for dragging your men here. It was a Western, after all.”

Horizon: An American Saga is the first installment in a four-part film series, with the second part set to be released in August. Parts three and four are currently in the works. Costner leads the ensemble cast of the story that takes place over the course of 15 years of pre- and post-Civil War expansion.

The series marks Costner’s return to directing in more than 20 years. He landed an Oscar for his directorial debut, Dances With Wolves, in 1991 and followed that with The Postman (1997) and Open Range (2003). Since then, he’s focused primarily on acting in and producing projects — most recently Yellowstone, which he officially exited on June 20.

When it came to Horizon: An American Saga, however, the multihyphenate told The Hollywood Reporter that he knew he had to return to the director’s chair for the film series he has been working on since the 1980s.

“Sometimes you wonder if you can still ride the bike, but what I knew was I believed so much in my story that I really was the one that needed to direct this,” he told THR at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Monday. “I didn’t want to come away not bringing everything home that I thought the movie had a chance to deliver.”

He added, “There are people that are more talented than myself. I’m sure that [there are] directors [who] really understand the camera, but I believe in the story, and I believe so much in it that for me I think that comes shining through my movies.”

Horizon: An American Saga is now in theaters.