Monday June 24, 2024 at 9:25 p.m., TMC broadcasts the first film in which Whitney Houston appears during her career. Released in 1992, it was a hit at the box office and allowed the singer to launch her greatest hits.
“Share my life, take me for what I am. ‘Cause I’ll never change, all my colors for you”…How to forget the notes of I Have Nothing, one of the key songs from the soundtrack of a cult film? Like her, the timeless I Will Always Love You And I’m Every Woman embellished the film that launched Whitney Houston’s short career in cinema: Bodyguard. Monday June 24, 2024 at 9:25 p.m., TMC broadcasts the feature film by Mick Jackson, with the singer in the title roles and Kevin Costner, who fought for her to join the cast. “I was convinced that it was worth it.”, the actor will say in an interview about his co-star, propelled to the rank of icon after the release of the film. And he was right. Their on-screen chemistry sold tickets to this film, which grossed $411 million. A triumph that neither of them expected.
Who was Kevin Costner’s partner on the set of Bodyguard?
She didn’t see herself acting. Whitney Houston had begun a successful career in music when Kevin Costner convinced her to join him in a film. The one who refused to play in Dreamgirls recounts in an interview that this first role in the cinema was “a natural progression”. Even though she felt intimidated in front of her partner, “very trained” and already winner of an Oscar obtained in 1991 for Dancing with the wolvesshe wanted to do her best and even take lessons to learn how to act. “But Kevin reassured me. He told me that whatever I needed, they would provide it.”, she confides. Admitting at the same time that she doubted her acting skills more than she suffered from the stress on the set of the film. No doubt it is this palpable uncertainty and this authenticity which gave Bodyguard all its legitimacy and the love of the public. The success was such that Whitney Houston, who had not considered becoming a movie star, found herself caught up in a spiral. “I absolutely didn’t anticipate that the film was going to be such a hit. Maybe Kevin did, but I didn’t. I just wanted to do a good job with great people”she admitted to the Chicago Tribune.
Whitney Houston: her brief and musical career in cinema
Journalist Gary Susman remembers Huffpost to have exchanged with the star in 1996 when she was at the peak of her career. “It just happened.”she told him. “After Bodyguard, I think Hollywood saw me the way they saw Barbra Streisand when she started. They said to themselves: ‘We can hire her for a film, but she has to sing.’ I hadn’t planned anything, she adds. In Where Are the Men?, I didn’t want to sing at all. I just wanted to play.”. In the end, the actress had to learn to put on both hats. Her film career includes three other films in which she gives voice: The Pastor’s Wife, The Legend of Cinderella (a musical version of the tale in which she lends her features to the fairy godmother, alongside the singer Brandy and Whoopi Goldberg) and Sparkle. She will also appear in a few TV films. But it was obviously in music that Whitney Houston flourished the most during her life. Before her death in 2012, the singer had already sold more than 220 million albums worldwide, making her one of the biggest sellers. The album The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrackreleased alongside the film, sold 45 million copies.
