At least that's how Kevin Costner spins the tale.
In the forthcoming January issue of Premiere magazine, Costner confirms he was in talks with Diana about her feature film debut--as costar in a sequel to his 1992 hit, The Bodyguard.
Late Tuesday, the royal family's mouthpieces at Kensington Palace issued an official denial of Costner's version of things--saying Diana never entertained a film career.
The Costner story, meanwhile, as leaked in today?s New York Post, is rich with the type of details that Alanis Morrissette would mistake for irony: The chief one being the nature of the project--The Bodyguard. Diana's bodyguard, of course, was the sole survivor of the auto crash that killed her and two others.
Another sad bit: A second draft of the script--a screenplay that had been tailored for the former Lady Spencer--arrived for Costner?s perusal only three days prior to Diana?s death. Following the events of that fateful Labor Day weekend, the Oscar-winning director of Dances with Wolves tells the movie mag that it "broke his heart" to read the story.
"I picked it up and the first 30 pages were totally her," Costner says. "It was dignified, sexy, smart, funny--and I couldn't finish [it after her death]. I stopped."
The movie was to have featured Diana as a "beautiful princess," the actor's producing partner tells Premiere. Not looking to stretch a novice thespian, the flick would have "played beautifully into her hand," Jim Wilson says. (The first Bodyguard was similarly rigged for singer and then-fledgling actress Whitney Houston.) And presumably as a fringe benefit for Costner, there would have been "definitely a love thing going on between" the bodyguard and the crown-wearer.
The top-secret Costner/Diana talks began more than a year ago. Another on-the-outs royal, Sarah Ferguson, talked Costner up on the idea, according to the Post. The actor later rang up Diana himself--and she said she would indeed be up for doing a movie-star turn within two or three years.
Costner was described by Premiere's editor as being "very reluctant" to spill the details on this too-good-to-be-true story. But the actor, now hyping his upcoming holiday release, The Postman, didn't flinch when a writer for the mag asked him to confirm the tale.
With Diana's untimely death, only the princess' life story may now make it to the big screen. Plans are underway to adapt the controversial "autobiography," Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words, into a feature film.
(UPDATED at 12:15 p.m. on 11/18/97)