Oscar Profile #385: Annette Bening

Born May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, the youngest of four children of a church soloist and an insurance salesman, Annette Bening grew up in San Diego, California. She began acting in junior high school where she played the lead in The Sound of Music. She began her professional career with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 1980. By 1984 she was starring as Lady Macbeth at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre where she met first husband J. Steven White (1984-1991). She made her Broadway debut in 1987’s Coastal Disturbances for which she was nominated for a Tony.

In small parts in TV movies from 1986 and the 1988 film, The Great Outdoors, Bening had her first high profile role in 1989’s Valmont, Milos Forman’s film of Les liaisons dangereuse, filmed at the same time as Stephen Frears’ 1988 version, Dangerous Liaisons for which Glenn Close earned an Oscar nomination in the same role.

Bening’s role in Frears’ The Grifters earned her an Oscar nomination of her own. Starring opposite Warren Beatty in 1991’s Bugsy, she became pregnant by Hollywood’s most notorious playboy, 21 years her senior, and married him in 1992, providing him with four children early in their now 26-year marriage.

Bening next starred opposite Beatty in 1994’s Love Affair, a poorly received remake of 1939’s Love Affair and 1957’s An Affair to Remember. She rebounded with Richard Loncraine’s Richard III updated to a modern fascist England and Rob Reiner’s The American President opposite Michael Douglas, both in 1995.

Nominated for a second time for an Oscar in 1999’s Best Picture winner, American Beauty, Bening was nominated for a third time for 2004’s Being Julia and for a fourth time for 2010’s The Kids Are All Right.

Even after her four Oscar nominations, Bening has continued to do what she has always done, take on interesting characters despite the size of the role. In the second decade of the current century she has appeared in support of Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan in Ruby Sparks, Kristen Wiig in The Girl Most Likely and Al Pacino in Danny Collins. She also played the minor role of the mother of Lily Collins, husband Beatty’s leading lady in Rules Don’t Apply. On the other hand, she had the lead in two of the best films of the last eight years, 20th Century Women and Film Stars Don’t Live in Liverpool.

Next in season 3 of TV’s American Crime Story, Bening has two completed films waiting release, a third in post-production and a fourth in pre-production. In The Seagull opposite Saoirse Ronan, she has the role Simone Signoret played in the 1968 film version opposite Vanessa Redgrave. Redgrave, who played her mother in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool plays her mother once again in Georgetown.

Annette Being remains a formidable screen presence at 59.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT (1995), directed by Rob Reiner

What a different world we lived in just twenty-three years ago with a liberal president in the White House and a movie about politics reflected liberal values without being the least bit controversial. Michael Douglas had one of his best roles as the widowed Clintonesque president and Bening was even better as the environmental lobbyist who becomes his girlfriend. With strong support from Martin Sheen as Douglas’ chief of staff, Michael J. Fox as his domestic advisor and Richard Dreyfuss as his nasty, mud-slinging conservative opponent in his bid for re-election, this was as smart a comedy-drama as any at the time.

AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999), directed by Sam Mendes

The emphasis in Mendes’ one-of-a-kind comedy-drama of modern suburban American life was on Richard Dreyfuss in an Oscar-winning performance as the Oscar-winning film’s narrator, a bored middle-aged husband and father who lusts after his 16-year-old daughter’s best friend. Thora Birch is the daughter, Mena Suvari the friend, Wes Bentley the film-obsessed boy-next-door and Chris Cooper is Bentley’s army colonel dad. The film’s most brilliant concoction is Bening’s ambitious wife, a real-estate agent who loves her house more than her husband, a throwback to Rosalind Russell in Craig’s Wife.

BEING JULIA (2004), directed by Istvan Szabo

Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s 1937 novel, Theatre, this was the sixth version produced either for television or the movies. Bening, who was the main competition to Hillary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry) for the 1999 Oscar for Best Actress in American Beauty) was once again her toughest competition in her second win for Million Dollar Baby with her brilliant run in this lighthearted soufflé in which she plays a beloved 1930s British stage star in an open marriage with Jeremy Irons. Shaun Evans (Endeavor plays her American boy-toy.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (2010), directed by Lisa Cholodenko

Nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress, Bening had her best role to date as half of a lesbian couple with Julianne Moore with whom they are raising 18-year-old daughter Mia Wasikowska and fifteen-year-old Josh Hutcherson. Bening, Wasikowa’s mother, is a doctor. Moore, Hutchinson’s mother, is a landscaper. The comedy-drama goes into full throttle when the kids track down their biological sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo) and invite him over for dinner. Things become even more complicated when Moore and Ruffalo begin an affair which brings out the tiger in Bening.

FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL (2017), directed by Paul McGuigan

Small-time British actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell) was in his mid-twenties when he met screen legend Gloria Grahame (Bening) in a rooming house in London where they were both staying. Grahame was in her early fifties. Despite their age differences, they fell in love and Turner took her home to Liverpool to meet his family where she greatly enjoyed their company. Two years later, after they have broken up, the dying Grahame returns to the family’s Liverpool home where she hopes to spend her last days. Both stars are excellent, richly deserving of their BAFA nominations which sadly did not translate into Oscar nominations.