Happy birthday, Kevin Costner!
Costner, who turns 69 Thursday, shared a photo of himself from his debut film, 1981’s Malibu Hot Summer, to Instagram as he marked his big day. The actor was in his mid-20s at the time the movie was filmed.
“Celebrating another year of life today and taking a moment to honor this kid who had big dreams. It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come,” Costner wrote in a caption to the post. “Thank you all for the birthday wishes. It’s because of your support that I’ve been able to chase my dreams all these years.”
Costner recently appeared at the 2024 Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 7, after he could not attend the awards show in 2023 due to severe rainstorms and flooding in Los Angeles. The 2023 Golden Globe winner for Yellowstone presented this year’s award for best actress in a musical or comedy series with America Ferrera and surprised the actress — and the audience — by reciting part of her Barbie monologue.
“You know, you have a scene that I really love. I think a lot of people really love that scenel,” he said. “You know, ‘It’s literally impossible to be a woman.’ You know that, ‘You’re so beautiful. You’re so smart and kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough.’ That was pretty good.”
A stunned Ferrera replied, “Did you, Kevin Costner, memorize my monologue about womanhood from Barbie?” to which Costner simply deadpanned, “No.”
Costner’s next turn around the sun expects to be a big one. His long-awaited movie Horizon: An American Saga, a project Costner has said he has worked on for years, is expected to hit theaters on June 28.
Costner shared in a May 2023 Instagram post that he has not “felt this way about a movie since we were making Dances With Wolves,” referencing his Academy Award-winning 1990 epic. In a June 2023 interview with Deadline, he shared that he has been developing the series in various forms since since 1988 and has ran into trouble finding “anybody to make it.” Instead, he partially funded the project himself by taking out a mortgage on his 10-acre home in Santa Barbara, Calif., as he revealed at the time.
Costner told PEOPLE in Nov. 2022 that his son Hayes, 14, whom he shares with ex-wife Christine Baumgartner, will appear in the movie. At the time, he quipped that the movie’s “screenplay [has] been around longer than” Hayes’ entire life.