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.



Naomi Campbell Barred from Being Charity Trustee in England and Wales

British model Naomi Campbell cries after being awarded the 'Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) title at the French Ministry for Culture in Paris on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
British model Naomi Campbell cries after being awarded the 'Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) title at the French Ministry for Culture in Paris on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
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Naomi Campbell Barred from Being Charity Trustee in England and Wales

British model Naomi Campbell cries after being awarded the 'Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) title at the French Ministry for Culture in Paris on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
British model Naomi Campbell cries after being awarded the 'Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) title at the French Ministry for Culture in Paris on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)

British supermodel Naomi Campbell has been barred from being a charity trustee in England and Wales for five years after the poverty charity she founded nearly two decades ago was deemed Thursday to have been “poorly governed” with “inadequate financial management.”
Following a three-year investigation into the financial activities of “Fashion for Relief,” the Charity Commission, which registers and regulates charities in England and Wales, said it had found “multiple instances of misconduct and/or mismanagement,” and that only 8.5% of the charity’s overall expenditure went on charitable grants in a six-year period from 2016.
For example, it said that thousands of pounds worth of charity funds were used to pay for a luxury hotel stay in Cannes, France, for Campbell as well as spa treatments, room service and even cigarettes. The regulator sought explanations from the trustees but said no evidence was provided to back up their explanation that hotel costs were typically covered by a donor to the charity, therefore not costing the charity, said The Associated Press.
Campbell, 54, said she was “extremely concerned” by the findings of the regulator and that an investigation on her part was underway.
“I was not in control of my charity, I put the control in the hands of a legal employer,” she said in response to a question from the AP after being named a knight in France’s Order of Arts and Letters at the country's culture ministry for her contribution to French culture. "We are investigating to find out what and how, and everything I do and every penny I ever raised goes to charity.”
The commission, which registers and regulates charities in England and Wales, also found that fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich received around 290,000 pounds ($385,000) of unauthorized funds for consultancy services, which was in breach of the charity's constitution. She has been disqualified as a trustee for nine years. The other trustee, Veronica Chou, was barred for four years.
“Trustees are legally required to make decisions that are in their charity’s best interests and to comply with their legal duties and responsibilities,” said Tim Hopkins, deputy director for specialist investigations and standards. “Our inquiry has found that the trustees of this charity failed to do so, which has resulted in our action to disqualify them.”
The charity, which was founded in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, was dissolved and removed from the register of charities earlier this year. On its website, which is still active, the charity said that it presented fashion initiatives and projects in New York, London, Cannes, Moscow, Mumbai and Dar es Salaam, raising more than $15 million for good causes around the world.
The charity had been set up with the aim of uniting the fashion industry to relieve poverty and advance health and education, by making grants to other organizations and giving resources towards global disasters.
The commission said that around 344,000 pounds ($460,000) has been recovered and that a further 98,000 pounds of charitable funds have been protected. These funds were used to make donations to two other charities and settle outstanding liabilities.  
“I am pleased that the inquiry has seen donations made to other charities which this charity has previously supported,” said the regulator's Hopkins.