Do we like Kevin Costner?
Our score: 5 out of 10. No harmful words of his own turned up and there's real good, but an undecided set-conduct lawsuit keeps him in the middle.
Costner has spent the last few years betting his own money on Horizon, a sprawling Western series he has directed and starred in. That sort of all-in gamble is classic Costner, and it's also where most of his recent trouble has come from. The coverage I could open for this card is mostly about the courts, so the early-career backstory is thin here.
The big one is the lawsuit from stunt performer Devyn LaBella, filed in May 2025. She alleges Costner added a sexual assault scene on the Horizon 2 set without warning and that she was not rehired after she complained. His lawyer said the claims have “absolutely no merit”, and Costner has denied the allegations.
On harm, the search turned up nothing nasty from him about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. On politics, he has said he's a registered Independent who has endorsed Pete Buttigieg and Liz Cheney, and that he didn't mind if that cost him fans. I haven't checked every collaborator on his recent films, so that part is thinner than I'd like.
The money side is messier. A costume company sued his Horizon production firm in 2025 over nearly $350,000 in alleged unpaid fees, and it was dismissed after a settlement with terms undisclosed. Years earlier, in 2012, a federal jury threw out Stephen Baldwin's $17 million claim over an oil-spill cleanup deal, and Costner said he refused to settle to protect his reputation.
For the good stuff, he released a song in October 2024 with his band Modern West, with all proceeds going to Hope Force International for victims of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. It's a solid, practical gesture rather than a photo op.
So where does that leave us? He passes the harm test as far as we found, and the good-person test is a close call because the set-conduct allegations are unresolved and he denies them. If you're a fan, you can keep watching, but keep an eye on the court.