Dec. 8, 2025, 3:38 p.m. ET
Earlier than Kevin Costner rode into the sundown on “Yellowstone,” earned two Oscars for “Dances With Wolves,” beckoned bygone baseball stars to a cornfield, or slept in a camper on Sundown Boulevard whereas dreaming of Hollywood fame, the seed for stardom was planted at church.
“I feel I used to be about 4 years outdated once I was chosen to be a shepherd in our church’s yearly manufacturing of the Nativity,” he says in ABC’s “Kevin Costner Presents: The First Christmas.” “Could be my performing debut, and I’d have one line, ‘Hark!’ ”
The 2-hour particular premiering Dec. 9 (8 ET/PT and streaming the following day on Hulu and Disney+) splices a portrayal of Jesus’ beginning with context from specialists and commentary from Costner. Engaged on “The First Christmas” lit the actor up like a Christmas tree.
“All of us assume we all know (the story),” Costner tells USA TODAY. “All of us watch for this time of yr after which we get mad at it, too, as a result of now it’s ‘a lot stuff I’ve to do, and I hate this.’ It is ‘too many individuals are coming to the home.’ There’s this different story that modified the world, quite a lot of the world.”
“I used to be proud to have the ability to do it,” Costner, 70, provides. “I am positive I will confront the cynics and the nonbelievers, who I invite them to sit down down, too, and so they can really feel how they really feel. However I used to be actually joyful. This gave me pleasure to do it.”
The church Costner says his household helped construct within the Nineteen Fifties was his “basis.”
“Our associates got here from the church,” he says. “The church was central in our lives.”
Costner’s grandmother served as choir director and his mother, Sharon Costner, lent her voice as a member. Sharon, who appeared in two of Costner’s movies, “Tin Cup” and “For Love of the Sport,” died in 1998. “I cherished watching my mother sing,” Costner says. “I want I might see her sing now.”
Her performances stay in Costner’s reminiscence and the church’s teachings in his coronary heart.
“These improbable tales of religion and of believing, it is good to imagine in one thing,” he says. “I’d hate to stay in a world the place I do not imagine in something.”
Costner steadily depends on his religion, even when − to borrow a metaphor from his beloved Western style – life hog-ties him.
“We are able to’t all the time clarify what strikes us or what provides us this type of willpower or this religion that we’ll come out of this darkish spot,” Costner says. “We are able to’t. We simply select to imagine, and it’s one thing that has actually sustained me.”
In 2023, Costner’s second spouse, Christine Baumgartner, with whom he shares three youngsters, filed for divorce after practically 19 years of marriage. Professionally, Costner has been challenged on his conquest to make his four-part film sequence “Horizon: An American Saga.” The discharge of Half 2 was delayed in 2024, and Costner has overtly talked about problem in financing Chapter 3.
“I’ve had super ups, and I’ve been bruised equally,” Costner says. “I’ve had issues stated about me that I do know, you recognize − however I’ve to endure them. And so how do I select to stay my life, in anger or in religion that issues will reveal themselves in the proper approach? And so I’ve simply chosen to try this.
“However being a human, you retain considering to God, ‘You must hurry up, God. Hear, I have been praying for this for a very long time. You bought to select it up a little bit bit.’ However we stay with religion, so we will be examined. It’s simply we’re examined on a regular basis.”
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