Sienna Miller: I Was 'Obsessed' with Costner's 'Dances with Wolves'

Costner and Miller are co-stars in 'Horizon: An American Saga'. Valery HACHE / AFP
Costner and Miller are co-stars in 'Horizon: An American Saga'. Valery HACHE / AFP
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Sienna Miller: I Was 'Obsessed' with Costner's 'Dances with Wolves'

Costner and Miller are co-stars in 'Horizon: An American Saga'. Valery HACHE / AFP
Costner and Miller are co-stars in 'Horizon: An American Saga'. Valery HACHE / AFP

Sienna Miller was such a huge fan of Kevin Costner's films when growing up that she named her pet rabbits after animals in "Dances With Wolves".
Now she is starring alongside Costner in his ambitious film series "Horizon: An American Saga" -- a four-part project that he mortgaged his home to fund, said AFP.
The first two installments -- each some three hours long -- hit cinemas this summer, with the first released on June 28.
Miller, 42, said she remained star-struck.
"I'm a child of the 90s. I can still barely look at Kevin, because he was such a huge part of my childhood," she told AFP.
Costner's Oscar-winning "Dances with Wolves" from 1990 was "the first time I really had my heart broken by a film -- I was obsessed with it," Miller said.
She had two pet rabbits named Two Socks and Cisco after the wolf and horse in the film.
"Horizon" follows multiple characters and storylines on the violent frontier of the 19th century as European settlers took over Native American land, with Miller playing a woman whose family is attacked and faces a brutal struggle to survive.
"I like to think I would be an OK frontier woman. I'm more outdoorsy than you might assume," she said.
"But I don't think it would have been fun. I know Kevin says he wished he lived back then. I think it was a very difficult time to have been alive."
Miller was pregnant for the filming of the second installment, which made the conditions even tougher.
"We were really out in nature. That was hard, because you're in corsets and it's boiling and there are scorpions and rattlesnakes.
"I found earth, that red earth, in my hair for like a month. Up my nose, ears, every orifice. Well, not every orifice," she added with a laugh.
Only Costner knew she was pregnant during the second shoot.
"I was feeling pretty sick. That corset was not my friend!"
'Horrific genocide'
Miller welcomed the chance to learn more about the history of the period.
"This country with an indigenous people who were exterminated violently, brutally, in a horrific genocide -- that isn't talked about nearly enough," she said.
"It's a bloody history and a gory history and a devastating history. But it happened. And I think to be able to look at it and not get too political, but just to show the truth of it, that's refreshing."
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, where "Horizon" got its world premiere last month, Costner told AFP he began working on the script way back in 1988 but could never find a studio to back it.
"But I loved it and so I decided I would write four, which is very American of me -- insane," he said.
Reviews so far have been decidedly mixed, however, with IndieWire calling it "the dullest vanity project of the century" while The Telegraph gushed over its "sheer, magisterial sweep".
Costner says he has no concerns about bankrupting himself.
"What's the fear? If they take it away from me, I still have my movie. I still have my integrity. I still listened to my heart," he said.



British Actor Maggie Smith Dies Aged 89

Actress Dame Maggie Smith arrives at the Royal Film Performance and World Premiere of the film, "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", at Leicester Square, London February 17, 2015. (Reuters)
Actress Dame Maggie Smith arrives at the Royal Film Performance and World Premiere of the film, "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", at Leicester Square, London February 17, 2015. (Reuters)
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British Actor Maggie Smith Dies Aged 89

Actress Dame Maggie Smith arrives at the Royal Film Performance and World Premiere of the film, "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", at Leicester Square, London February 17, 2015. (Reuters)
Actress Dame Maggie Smith arrives at the Royal Film Performance and World Premiere of the film, "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", at Leicester Square, London February 17, 2015. (Reuters)

Britain's Maggie Smith, one of the most acclaimed actors of her generation with a career ranging from Shakespeare to Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, has died aged 89, her family said on Friday.

Smith was one of a select few to win the treble of an Oscar, Emmy and Tony during seven decades on stage and screen, becoming a star known for her sharp intelligence and waspish wit.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Smith "introduced us to new worlds with the countless stories she acted over her long career".

"She was beloved by so many for her great talent, becoming a true national treasure whose work will be cherished for generations to come," he said.

After starting on stage in the 1950s, Smith became a fixture at Britain's new National Theatre in the 1960s, working alongside Laurence Olivier, before winning her first Oscar at the end of the decade.

But for many younger fans in the 21st century, she was best-known as Professor McGonagall in all seven "Harry Potter" movies, and the Dowager Countess in the hit TV series "Downton Abbey," a role that seemed tailor-made for an actor known for purse-lipped asides and malicious cracks.

She died in hospital in London early on Friday, her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens said.

"An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end," they said in a statement.

Smith's first Academy Award nomination was for her turn playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier's "Othello" in 1965, before winning the Oscar for her role as an Edinburgh schoolmistress in 1969's "“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie."

She won her second Oscar for her supporting role in the 1978 comedy "“California Suite".

Other critically acclaimed roles included Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's “"The Importance of Being Earnest" on the West End stage, a 92-year-old bitterly fighting senility in Edward Albee's play "“Three Tall Women," and her part in 2001 black comedy movie "Gosford Park."

In 1990 Smith was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and became a Dame.