Originally published on E! Online
Princess Diana was in love with her bodyguard.
Not his own bodyguard, obviously, but Prince William recently revealed a startling fact to Kevin Costner: his late mother was once obsessed with him.
“I happened to be in England and got the call that the prince wanted to talk, and I said, 'You know what?'” Costner explained in an interview with People magazine in its June 18 issue. “We met in this room. We were the only people there. He came up, we shook hands, and the first thing out of his mouth was, 'You know, my mom had a bit of a crush on you.'”
Costner, who noted during the conversation that Prince William was “a very young man,” was surprised to hear of Diana's affection but knew her quite well — after all, the pair were set to star together in sequels to The Bodyguard, introduced by Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.
“There were moments when I really didn't get off the ground,” the actor said of the Whitney Houston sequel that never happened, “very quietly, because that's the way I am.”
The 69-year-old also confirmed that the Duchess of York acted as a sort of chaperone during the couple's introduction.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Costner enthused about his first meeting with Princess Diana. “It was Sarah who created the opportunity. Sarah was very calm and could have been like, 'I'm a princess too. What about me?' She never did that. Diana and I started talking.”
No matter how joyous their encounter was, and no matter how strong their unspoken feelings were, Costner and Princess Diana eventually moved on to other partners.
Meanwhile, the “Bodyguard” actor married Christine Baumgartner in 2004 and was together for nearly 20 years before splitting last year. The couple have three children, sons Cayden, 17, and Hayes, 15, and daughter Grace, 14. Kevin also has three children, Annie, 40, Lily, 37, and Joe, 36, with ex-wife Annie Costner, and 26-year-old son Liam with ex-partner Bridget Rooney.
After her divorce from Prince Charles, with whom she had children William and Harry, was finalized in 1996, the princess briefly dated film producer Dodi Fayed, but the couple died in an infamous car crash in 1997, just months after they began dating.
