On a sunny day in January, Kevin Costner stood on the sprawling green lawn of his California beachfront property, in sunglasses and a quarter-zip sweater, and delivered his lines.
“Nobody’s sadder than us that we can’t be there at the Golden Globes,” Costner said as waves crashed ashore behind him. There was historic flooding in the area, he told his fans on Instagram — “yesterday we had to pull the kids out of school in Santa Barbara” — so highways were closed. He and Christine Baumgartner, his wife of 18 years, would be sad to miss the ceremony. “Chris had a beautiful dress,” he said. “I always look forward to walking down the red carpet with her.”
Hours later, Costner won the award for best actor in a drama series for “Yellowstone.” Regina Hall, the Golden Globes host, couldn’t help but crack a joke onstage while accepting the award on his behalf.
“This is a sad story right now. He’s stuck in Santa Barbara,” she said, laughing. “Let’s pray, everyone.”
It seemed Costner pretty much had it all: a doting wife, a beautiful home, a booming career.
Four months later, two of those three things had soured.
It happened quickly. In May, Baumgartner, 49, filed for divorce, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Days later, Paramount announced that “Yellowstone” would end with its fifth season.
Perhaps it felt a little like déjà vu. Costner’s personal and professional misfortunes had similarly collided in 1994, when his first wife, Cindy Silva, divorced him and walked away with a settlement estimated at $80 million. Less than a year later, Costner’s career sank thanks to the critical and box-office disaster that was “Waterworld,” a film that Costner not only starred in and produced but personally invested $22 million in.
In September, as he was leaving a Santa Barbara courtroom after a judge ruled in his favor in his custody battle with Baumgartner, Costner, 68, reflected on his latest personal saga.
“You know, when you have a life that long with somebody, there is no winner,” Costner told reporters, adding, “One minute you feel like you’re on top of the world, and then you realize how, you know, how vulnerable you are.”
In 1993, Costner, in his late 30s and married to Silva, met Baumgartner, then 19 or 20, on the putting green at a golf course in Santa Ynez, California. Six years later, they began a relationship after running into each other again at a trendy restaurant opening.
At the time, Costner was living life as a bachelor. In 2000, he purchased a 160-acre lot close to Aspen, Colorado, and spent the next few years turning it into his own luxury version of Dutton Ranch. After adding the finishing touches — including a “Field of Dreams”-inspired baseball field — Costner and Baumgartner married there in 2004.
The couple decided the best place to grow their family was in the sleepy seaside city of Carpinteria, California, where Costner owned an equally impressive beachfront compound. Baumgartner became a homemaker, turning the property into “an experience” for their three children — complete with two guest houses, an infinity pool, a volleyball court, and a “surf garage.”
The home was the first thing that turned their divorce ugly. Like his “Yellowstone” character, John Dutton, Costner was primarily concerned with defending the right to his property. Given that he’d been turfed out of his home as a result of his first divorce, Costner had added a clause to his and Baumgartner’s prenup that Baumgartner would have to move out if they legally separated.
But Baumgartner didn’t leave. She hunkered down.
Costner’s legal team, headed by the fierce and fiendishly expensive Laura Wasser, tried to make Baumgartner budge. They offered her $200,000 on top of her $1.45 million prenup payout to spend on a down payment on a new home.
Baumgartner’s lawyers balked, arguing that moving out wasn’t feasible because of rental-market oversaturation and because Costner hadn’t offered her enough in child support (she initially requested $248,000 a month to maintain the lifestyle their children were used to).
Costner’s camp took it to a judge. Baumgartner was given less than a month to leave.
What followed was petty and vicious squabbling over household items. Baumgartner’s side shared a list of items she wanted to claim from the house: her Peloton, her mother’s antique dresser, cutlery, pots, pans, an oil painting of horses.
Costner, who court documents indicate took home $19.5 million last year, expressed concern via his lawyers that Baumgartner was planning to quite literally clean house.
“She lists ‘Christine’s personal electronic’ but fails to specify what that means,” Costner’s attorneys wrote in a filing. “Is a TV a ‘personal’ electronic? Is she referring to household computers? Which ones?”
Baumgartner and her attorneys fought back in their own way. In written declarations, Baumgartner revealed unsavory details about her husband. In one statement, she alleged that Costner unceremoniously broke the news of the divorce to their teenagers “over a 10-minute Zoom call” from a hotel room in Las Vegas rather than together in person as they’d planned. She said he reduced her credit-card limit to $15,000 without her knowledge.
She also accused Costner of infidelity, asking for documentation via her lawyers of expenses “relating to any extramarital romantic relationships.” Costner, via his lawyers, said that he remained faithful but that he didn’t “know for a fact” if the same could be said of Baumgartner. At a divorce hearing in late August, she denied that a man she’d been pictured vacationing with a month earlier was her boyfriend.
When the two couldn’t agree on what would be an adequate amount of child support for their three teenage children — Costner’s lawyers described Baumgartner’s initial request as “unrealistic and frankly outrageous” and offered to pay at most $75,000 a month — the actor said in a filing that she’d spent $188,500 a month on plastic surgery and tried to hide it among childcare-related costs.
When a ruling on the child support came in September, Baumgartner discovered that her refusal to accept Costner’s highest offer had been unwise: The judge reduced Costner’s monthly payments to $63,209.
To audiences familiar with Costner’s role as Dutton, the mercurial and powerful rancher turned governor, on “Yellowstone,” Costner’s hard bargaining with his estranged wife may read like a scene from one of Taylor Sheridan’s scripts.
But before the finale of this enthralling divorce saga could begin, it was discreetly wrapped up. Costner and Baumgartner settled for an undisclosed sum in September, sparing themselves the spectacle of a highly publicized divorce trial and the ignominy of being characterized as the tightfisted husband and the gold-digging wife any longer.
Though his second marriage and his award-winning TV series have ended, Costner is already crafting the next era of his mythology. In May, he began production on “Horizon: An American Saga,” a two-part Western he’s cowriting, directing, producing, and starring in. Once again, he’s betting the ranch on it, mortgaging his Santa Barbara property and investing $20 million of his own money into making his cowboy dreams a reality.