Annette Bening

Annette Bening (born May 29, 1958, Topeka, Kansas, U.S.) is an American actress known for her poise and quiet presence in a wide range of roles.

Early life

Bening was the youngest of four children. Her father was an insurance salesman, and, when she was a child, his job caused the family to move from Kansas to San Diego, California, where she grew up. She began acting in school plays, and in 1975 she graduated from high school. After a year working as a cook for a charter fishing boat company, Bening enrolled in San Diego Mesa College, where she took theater classes and appeared in two plays with the San Diego Repertory Theatre. She subsequently studied drama at San Francisco State University (B.A., 1980). Bening acted with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and also became a member of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

Career

In 1987 Bening made her Broadway debut, appearing as a photographer in Coastal Disturbances; for her performance, she earned a Tony Award nomination. She also had small roles on television, beginning with a TV movie in 1986. In her film debut she played the wife of Dan Aykroyd’s character in the comedy The Great Outdoors (1988), which also starred John Candy. She won notice for her portrayal of the manipulative marquise de Merteuil opposite Colin Firth in Miloš Forman’s Valmont (1989). Bening’s breakthrough performance was as a similarly complex con artist in Stephen Frears’s The Grifters (1990), for which she received an Academy Award nomination.

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In 1991 Bening starred with Warren Beatty in the well-received biopic Bugsy, and the following year the couple married. They costarred again in the romantic comedy Love Affair (1994). Bening next played the female lead in another romance, Rob Reiner’s The American President, this time opposite Michael Douglas, and she also played Queen Elizabeth in Richard III (both 1995). She later appeared with Denzel Washington in the thriller The Siege (1998). For her portrayal of the success-obsessed wife of the protagonist in American Beauty (1999), Bening was again nominated for an Oscar.

Her later movies included the sci-fi comedy What Planet Are You From? (2000) and the western Open Range (2003). She received her third Oscar nod for playing the title character in the melodrama Being Julia (2004), about an aging actress. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her portrayal of the real-life convicted murderer Jean Harris in the TV movie Mrs. Harris (2005). After appearing in Running with Scissors (2006), The Women (2008), and Mother and Child (2009), Bening received her fourth Oscar nomination, for her starring role opposite Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right (2010), a dramedy about a married lesbian couple whose two children seek out their birth father.

Bening continued to find rewarding roles in such character-driven films as Ruby Sparks (2012), The Face of Love (2013), The Search (2014), Danny Collins (2015), and 20th Century Women (2016). She also appeared in Rules Don’t Apply (2016), written and directed by Beatty, and played an aging Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017). In 2018 she starred in a film adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull. Bening later portrayed Senator Dianne Feinstein in The Report (2019), about the investigation into the U.S. government torture program in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, and she was cast in the superhero movie Captain Marvel (2019). In 2022 she starred in director Kenneth Branagh’s mystery film Death on the Nile and in the comedy-drama Jerry and Marge Go Large opposite Bryan Cranston. She garnered her fifth Oscar nomination for her portrayal of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad in the sports biopic Nyad (2023).

Bening also continued occasionally working onstage. She appeared Off-Broadway in 1988 in Spoils of War. In Los Angeles she acted in Medea (2009) and The Female of the Species (2010). In 2014 Bening took the part of Goneril in a Shakespeare in the Park production of King Lear in New York City. She returned to Broadway to star in All My Sons (2019), earning a second Tony Award nomination.

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