Kevin Costner‘s history directing and starring in big Western movies made him the perfect choice to play Yellowstone‘s John Dutton. In March 1991, he was the big winner at the Academy Awards. During the star-studded ceremony, his Western epic Dances With Wolves scored seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Costner. How big of a deal were those wins? In Academy Award history, only two other traditional Westerns have ever been named Best Picture: Cimarron in 1931 and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, which won two years after Dances With Wolves. (Eastwood also nabbed his own Best Director trophy, just like Costner.)
So, it’s no wonder that Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan cast Costner, 26 years later, as the lead of his own modern Western epic. The acclaimed screenwriter and director has always listed Dances With Wolves as one of his major influences, and by the series’ 2018 premiere, Costner had aged into the perfect icon to cast as a modern Montana patriarch with an empire to protect: experienced, commanding and gravelly voiced while looking natural in a Stetson and riding a horse.
Because of the current success of Yellowstone, Sheridan is credited with reviving the Western genre on television, just as Costner was credited with reviving Westerns for the silver screen thanks to Dances With Wolves more than three decades ago. Another similarity between the two Westerns: Costner was praised for his portrayal of Native American life in the movie and for using Indigenous (in that case, Lakota) language onscreen; with Yellowstone, Sheridan is respectful of the complexities of modern Native American life.
A fun casting note marks one more way in which these two American Westerns overlap: In Dances With Wolves Graham Greene played a Sioux medicine man named Kicking Bird who helped Costner’s character, John Dunbar, gain acceptance into the tribe. Sheridan cast Greene in the Yellowstone prequel 1883 as a Crow elder named Spotted Eagle who guides Dutton ancestor James (Tim McGraw) and his daughter Elsa (Isabel May) to her final resting place, which eventually becomes the Dutton Ranch.
Scroll down to see more of Cotner’s great western roles and projects.