https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/kevin-costner-politics-183305377.html
Kevin Costner says it's 'OK' if people don't like him for his politics
Mon, November 14, 2022 at 1:33 PM·5 min read
Costner told the
Daily Beast in 2020
, "I'm an Independent. I vote for who I think has the best interests of the country and how we sit in the world." He went on to say that when he was identified as a Republican actor in the 1980s and early '90s, he didn't bother to clarify his stance. "I just didn't even answer back," he said. "I think it was because of the movies I was doing," including
Dances With Wolves, "but I never said one thing or another. I really go back and forth on my votes. The Democratic Party doesn't represent everything that I think, and neither does the Republican Party right now —
at all. So, I find it too limiting."
The same year, he told
Variety, he was voting Biden, after Buttigieg dropped out, because he was most hopeful he could be "a president for both sides." While he didn't name Trump outright, he said, "The idea of racism and of violence… we all have to be able to look at that go, 'Enough. That's enough.'" He added, "It's pretty clear every four years we get a chance to kind of look at where we are as a country and decide if we’re going the right way and if we’re not, we have that opportunity to make a shift."
When Trump was running against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Costner
said he didn't find the presidential election as "entertaining" as others did. “I find it embarrassing. I find it highly immature. I think America is really teetering at a low point with the way we talk to each other… Where are our big ideas? There's dialogue right now that's shameful."
However, he's never hidden from his conservative roots. In an
interview with
Huffington Post in 2008, he was asked about being a registered Republican until the 1996 election, which is when he changed hi registration to Independent and mostly voted Democrat after that.
"I'm not a Republican," he said. "I basically was raised in a house that was a Republican house. My politics came out my kitchen table, listening to my parents. I thought the people that protested against the Vietnam war were unpatriotic because my brother was fighting over in Vietnam. I was only 14 years old. As I got time and distance I realized it was just a difference of opinion and their opinion wasn't necessarily wrong. As a person evolves they begin to have their own voice and their own way of thinking. I wasn'y ahead of my time."
