Dolly Parton has revealed her own private security once grappled with The Bodyguard star Kevin Costner.
Parton’s song “I Will Always Love You” was famously covered by Whitney Houston for the soundtrack of the 1992 romantic thriller, which Houston also starred in alongside Costner. Houston’s version of the song sold over 24 million copies worldwide to become the best-selling single by a female artist of all time.
In her new memoir, Star of the Show: My Life on Stage, Parton writes of the cover version: “I didn’t even recognize it at first when I heard it on the radio! But since I had written it myself and owned all the publishing rights, the sales and the radio airplay of Whitney’s version created a huge windfall.”
She adds: “I was also proud to present Whitney with a Grammy for her rendition in 1994. I’ve said it many time — I will always love Whitney and what she did with my little song.”
Later in the book, Parton recalls an amusing incident involving her bodyguard Bryan Seaver.
“Here’s how much Bryan takes care of me,” writes Parton. “In the first few years he worked with me, he accompanied me to a conference at the Loews Vanderbilt Plaza. We were walking down a hallway when the door to one of the rooms opened. A guy with scruffy facial hair and blue jeans walked out, took one look at me, and rushed my way!
“Bryan jumped in his path, pushed him up against the wall, and held him there by his chest and his throat.
“I started laughing. ‘Bryan, let him go! That’s Kevin Costner!’
“Bryan relaxed, but he didn’t let Kevin off the hook. ‘You should know better,’ Bryan told him. ‘You’re the bodyguard.’
“He was right, of course. Kevin had played a security guard for Whitney Houston’s character in the movie that featured her singing ‘I Will Always Love You,’ and here was my security guard pinning him against a wall, thinking he was a threat. You can’t make up that kind of thing!”
After Houston died from accidental drowning aged 48 in 2012, Costner delivered a 17-minute eulogy for his late friend and co-star.
“Somebody said, ‘CNN’s here, they wouldn’t mind if your remarks were kept shorter because they’re going to have commercials,’” he recalled in a 2024 interview. “And I said, ‘They can get over that. They can play the commercial while I’m talking, I don’t care.’”
Dolly Parton’s Star of the Show: My Life on Stage is published by Ten Speed Press in the United States today, and by Ebury Press in the United Kingdom on November 13.
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