Annette Bening

• 1. Introduction

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  Annette Bening has stood at the edge of the three biggest prizes in American acting and has yet to take home a single one. She has been nominated five times for an Academy Award, twice for a Tony Award, and once for a Primetime Emmy. Very few artists hold that particular distinction. It says something about a performer who has been admired for more than four decades without ever being typecast. Her work moves between Hollywood comedy, Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, superhero spectacle and television drama. How does a career like that begin? Why does a screen star keep walking back onto the stage? And what do her choices of roles reveal about the actress who made them?

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• 2. Kansas And California

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  Topeka, Kansas, is where Annette Carol Bening was born on the 29th of May 1958. She was the youngest of four children. Her sister Jane and her brothers Bradley and Byron were all older.

  Her mother, Shirley Katherine, was a church singer and soloist. Her father, Arnett Grant Bening, worked as a sales training consultant and an insurance salesman. Both parents came originally from Iowa. They were practicing Episcopalians and conservative Republicans, and Bening is of mostly German and English descent.

  The year 1959 took the family to Wichita, Kansas, where she spent her early childhood. During her elementary school years her father moved everyone again, this time to San Diego, California. She would live there for the rest of her youth.

  In junior high school she began acting and won the lead role in The Sound of Music. She graduated in 1975 from San Diego's Patrick Henry High School, where she studied drama.

  The next year had nothing to do with a stage. Bening worked as a cook on a charter boat that took fishing parties out onto the Pacific Ocean, and she went scuba diving for fun. Afterward she studied at San Diego Mesa College and earned a degree in Theatre Arts at San Francisco State University. San Francisco was also home to the training company where her professional life would truly begin.

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• 3. Life On Stage

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  The Colorado Shakespeare Festival company gave Bening her first professional stage work in 1980. She also appeared in plays at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. In San Francisco she joined the acting company at the American Conservatory Theater while studying in its Advanced Theatre Training Program. There she played Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth.

  During the 1985-86 season she starred in Pygmalion and The Cherry Orchard at the Denver Center Theatre Company. Then came New York. In 1987 she made her Broadway debut as Holly Dancer, a young photographer, in Tina Howe's play Coastal Disturbances. The part earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play and a Theatre World Award.

  Film fame did not end her loyalty to live theatre. In 1999 she played the title role in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. It was her first stage appearance in ten years. The Los Angeles Times wrote that "Bening uses her vocal instrument to fine effect, without throwing it around." The critic added that in movies you do not always hear what she can do with that voice.

  A new version of Euripides' Medea followed in 2009 at UCLA's Freud Playhouse. In 2010 she appeared in Joanna Murray-Smith's comedy The Female of the Species, again at the Geffen. Between those engagements, her recording of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway was released on Audible.com in 2012.

  Shakespeare under the open sky came in 2014, when she starred in King Lear at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The production was part of the Public Theatre's Free Shakespeare in the Park. It was her first New York stage appearance in twenty years.

  Broadway had to wait even longer. In 2019 she returned after a 32-year absence in a revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, opposite Tracy Letts. The play ran at the Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre, opening on the 4th of April 2019 and closing on the 23rd of June. It brought her a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Play.

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• 4. Breakthrough On Screen

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  The Great Outdoors, released in 1988, was Bening's film debut. It starred Dan Aykroyd and John Candy. Her next part was far more demanding. In Valmont (1989), she played the scheming Marquise de Merteuil opposite Colin Firth.

  The Grifters (1990) changed everything. Bening played Myra Langtry, a con artist, in a neo-noir crime thriller. The role brought her first Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actress, and a BAFTA nomination in the same category.

  In 1991 she portrayed Virginia Hill in Bugsy, Barry Levinson's biopic, alongside Warren Beatty. It earned her a first Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama. She also co-starred with Harrison Ford in Regarding Henry.

  Beatty and Bening starred together again in Love Affair in 1994. The following year she took a leading role as an environmental lobbyist in The American President, with Michael Douglas. Tim Burton's sci-fi spoof Mars Attacks! came in 1996. In 1998 she appeared in The Siege, a thriller with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis.

  The film that would define the end of the decade was still ahead, and it came from a first-time film director.

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• 5. Marriages

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  At the American Conservatory Theater, Bening met an actor named J. Steven White. They married in 1984 and moved to Colorado, where White managed the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The marriage ended in divorce in 1991.

  On the 3rd of March 1992 she married the actor Warren Beatty. They have four children together. One of them, Ella Beatty, has also become an actress.

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• 6. Carolyn And Julia

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  Sam Mendes made his directorial debut with American Beauty in 1999, and Bening starred in it opposite Kevin Spacey. The dark comedy-drama follows a man suffering a mid-life crisis in suburban America of the 1990s. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

  Bening played Carolyn Burnham, a materialistic wife who is having an affair. The performance won her the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and the Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. It also gave her a first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a second Golden Globe nomination.

  In 2004 she took the title role in the comedy-drama Being Julia. Critics were warm. The part won her a first Golden Globe Award and brought a second Oscar nomination and a second Actor Award nomination.

  The years between the two films were busy. She appeared in In Dreams (1999), What Planet Are You From? (2000), and, as Sue Barlow, in Open Range (2003). Her next major challenge was a woman on trial.

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• 7. Difficult Women

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  Jean Harris, a convicted celebrity murderer, was the character Bening played in the HBO film Mrs. Harris (2005). The role earned nominations for both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

  In Running with Scissors (2006), she replaced Julianne Moore as Deirdre Burroughs, an aspiring poet with bipolar disorder. That performance brought her fifth Golden Globe nomination. She then appeared in the 2008 remake of The Women and won positive reviews for the independent film Mother and Child (2009).

  The Kids Are All Right arrived in 2010, with Bening as a lesbian mother. One reviewer said she "deserves an Oscar," and another praised her "sublime" performance. She won her second Golden Globe and received her third Oscar nomination and third BAFTA nomination. She was also nominated for Best Actress and for Best Cast at the Actor Awards.

  In 2015 she starred with Al Pacino in Dan Fogelman's comedy drama Danny Collins. Mike Mills cast her in 20th Century Women (2016) as a chain-smoking first-wave feminist struggling to raise her teenage son. Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig and Billy Crudup co-starred. Sheila O'Malley of Roger Ebert.com declared, "Bening has one of the best performances of the year (and one of Bening's personal best as well)." The role earned nominations for an Independent Spirit Award and a Critics' Choice Movie Award, plus another Golden Globe nomination.

  In 2017 she played the Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, with Jamie Bell, Vanessa Redgrave and Julie Walters. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, "Bening is excellent as Grahame: imperious, vulnerable, romantic, sexually excited about her younger man, wanly aware of secrets she cannot share with him." The performance earned her a third BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

  After that came Irina Arkadina in The Seagull and Dr. Cait Morris in Life Itself, both in 2018.

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• 8. Marvel, Netflix And Beyond

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  Senator Dianne Feinstein was the part Bening played in the political drama The Report (2019). It earned her a first Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.

  The same year she joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Dr. Wendy Lawson in Captain Marvel, alongside Brie Larson. The film was a massive financial hit at the box office. In 2022 she acted in Kenneth Branagh's Death on the Nile and in the comedy Jerry & Marge Go Large, opposite Bryan Cranston.

  That year she also filmed Nyad with Jodie Foster. Bening played the long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad. Netflix distributed the film, which premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Critics gave her performance high praise, and it brought another Academy Award nomination, for Best Actress.

  Outside acting, 2023 brought a new responsibility. Bening was elected Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Entertainment Community Fund.

  Streaming then gave her a television lead. In Apples Never Fall, adapted by Peacock from Liane Moriarty's bestselling thriller, she starred alongside Sam Neill. Every episode of the limited series became available at once on the 15th of March 2024.

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