“She was my one true love.” Kevin Costner wasn’t talking about his wife.

.

Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston became an unlikely pair of legends when they starred together in 1992’s The Bodyguard — a film that turned into one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, and gave the world Whitney’s iconic rendition of I Will Always Love You.
Costner had fought for Houston to get the role, facing pushback from a studio uneasy about the casting.
“It just seemed like she was the best person,”
he explained, according to Us Weekly. “I couldn’t imagine anybody that didn’t want to kiss her.”
Their on-screen chemistry became the stuff of movie history — but off screen, a real friendship had formed, one that lasted until Whitney’s tragic death in 2012 at just 48 years old, following a long battle with addiction. As her struggles grew worse over the years, Costner tried to help the only way he knew how.
“There are some people that really love Whitney… would I write her a letter? I did. I don’t know if those letters were ever read,”
he recalled.
At her funeral, Costner gave a devastating eulogy, calling her his “pretend bodyguard” one final time. But it was what he said afterward, in a statement reported by the Daily Mail, that revealed just how deep his grief truly ran.
“I let her down, I should have been there and I wasn’t, and now for the rest of my life I will have to live with that pain,”
Costner admitted. “She was my one true love. I still have ‘I Will Always Love You’ as my ringtone.”
More than a decade later, the world still remembers Whitney Houston’s voice — and the friend who never stopped loving her. 🕊️