Annette Bening must be hard to act with. Her unparalleled precision and bustling energy so thoroughly commands every frame of her films that everything around her tends to pale in comparison. That hasn’t stopped her from causing on-screen sparks with Hollywood’s leading men, however, and since her proper debut in 1990’s “The Grifters” Bening has been one of America’s top romantic leading ladies.
Born far from the glitz of Hollywood in Topeka, Kansas on May 29, 1958, Bening lived her early childhood in nearby Wichita where her father worked for an insurance company. Her family relocated to San Diego in 1965, where Bening began acting in junior high musicals before graduating from Patrick Henry High School. The aspiring actress worked odd jobs after high school (including a stint as a cook for chartered fishing parties) and attended San Diego Mesa College before graduating with a degree in theatre from San Francisco State. It was in the Bay City that Bening perfected her craft, studying with the American Conservatory Theater’s Advanced Theater Training Program. A move to New York City saw Bening receive a Tony nomination for her performance in the off-Broadway production of Tina Howe’s “Coastal Disturbances”. She soon made her screen debut with the TV movie “Manhunt for Claude Dallas”, and next starred with Dan Aykroyd and John Candy in the forgettable comedy “The Great Outdoors”.
Bening was perfectly cast in Stephen Frears’s offbeat 1990 drama “The Grifters” as a mysterious con artist. She received her first Oscar nomination for the role, and that same year appeared with Meryl Streep in “Postcards from the Edge”. Suddenly a hot commodity, Bening had a huge year in 1991, starring with Harrison Ford in “Regarding Henry” and with future husband Warren Beatty in the James Toback-penned “Bugsy”. The latter would become Bening’s most memorable role – a sizzling performance as starlet Virginia Hill, the tumultuous muse for Las Vegas groundbreaker ‘Bugsy’ Siegel. “Bugsy” is a famously flawed film, but while it feels unfocused due to the competing talents behind the camera, it is punctuated by occasional moments of brilliance, usually when Bening and Beatty are eating up Toback’s sharp script.
Marriage bells rang in 1992 for Beatty and Bening, and the couple went on to have four children together. During these happy years Bening has given more terrific performances in films like “The American President” (playing First Girlfriend to a widowed Michael Douglas), the brilliant Ian McKellen-starring “Richard III”, and Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks!”. Bening received another Oscar nomination in 1999 for “American Beauty”, Sam Mendes’s stunning suburban drama that swept the Academy Awards. While Bening’s co-star Kevin Spacey won for his turn, Bening lost out to Hilary Swank, who she once again lost to in 2004 after being nominated for “Being Julia”. Bening has just received her fifth and sixth Globe noms for the TV movie “Mrs. Harris” and “Running with Scissors”. Next year she is set to star in the Oscar Wilde adaptation “A Woman of No Importance” with Lindsay Lohan and Sean Bean.