On A Role
SIENNA MILLER AS FRANCES KITTREDGE
THE ACTOR PIVOTS TO PIONEERING IN KEVIN COSTNER’S HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA
WORDS ALEX GODFREY
Pioneering women: Horizon’s Frances Kittredge (Sienna Miller);
THE CULTURE
In the sprawling 19th-century epic Horizon: An American Saga —Chapter 1, Sienna Miller’s Frances Kittredge is, she tells us, a pioneer taken to the town of Horizon by her husband James (Tim Guinee) “against her wishes, to some degree. She is put in a really volatile situation. Everybody’s journey west was in search of a better life, but with really no knowledge of what they were heading into, so they had to adapt or die, basically.” To tune into the Western mindset, Miller watched the work of John Ford and Sergio Leone (“Once Upon A Time In The West was one of my favourite films growing up”), and in Moab, Utah, where they shot, found a bookshop that proved instructive. “I read factual books about travelling west, about settlers, and photographic books of the people in that period in that area, which I found helpful.”