Warren Beatty And Annette Bening, Tom and Katie went kaput. Antonio and Melanie split. But some 22 years in, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening are still going strong, upending expectations and defying logic.
How did one of the greatest womanizers in Hollywood history — someone who once proclaimed that he couldn’t sleep at night unless he’d had sex — manage to settle down and build one of the longest-lasting unions in show business? As Bening kicks off a run Tuesday in the Shakespeare in the Park production of “King Lear,” we take a look.
Beatty is now 77 years old, and even subtracting the time he’s been married to Bening, some estimate he borders on record territory when it comes to conquests. Peter Biskind, author of “Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America,” puts the number at 12,775, which boils down to about one per night from the mid-1950s to 1991. Along the way, he’s been linked to dozens of famous names, including Joan Collins, Madonna and Carly Simon, who is rumored to have written “You’re So Vain” for the actor.
He met the woman who’d become his wife in 1990: Beatty was set to star in the mafia drama “Bugsy” and was in search of a leading lady to play Virginia Hill, gangster Bugsy Siegel’s girlfriend.
Beatty had heard good things about the talented Bening and had tried to meet with her for his film “Dick Tracy,” but the two could never get together. In November 1990, he invited her to lunch at Los Angeles restaurant Santo Pietro. Bening’s agent warned her not to take the meeting because he feared Beatty would hit on her.And it turned out he was right,” Beatty later recalled.
The two had lunch and went for a short walk. When Beatty returned to his office, he called “Bugsy” director Barry Levinson and said of Bening, “I love her, and I’m going to marry her.”
It was love at first sight — at least for Beatty. Bening knew of her future leading man’s reputation as a womanizer. Beatty was all in, even if it meant leaving the single life behind.
“It took about 10 minutes [to fall in love with her]. Maybe five,” he later said. “I was so elated to meet her, and yet at the same time, I began to mourn the passing of a way of life.”
Beatty had lived an exciting, libertine lifestyle that seemed to involve nearly nonstop fun and sex.
“When I was in my 20s and 30s, there were certain things that were irresistible. And then into my 40s and into my 50s, being adolescent never got boring,” he has said. “That fortunately came to a conclusion, not a moment too soon.”
When he met Bening, then 32, Beatty was ready to be domesticated.
Beatty and his leading lady reportedly stayed just friends on the movie until just before it wrapped. That’s when the two had dinner and Beatty invited Bening back to his house for dessert. As the two enjoyed ice cream in his kitchen, Beatty asked if she wanted kids. She said she did, and the two got started right then.
Bening claimed that she was attracted to Beatty because he was “smart and fun and interesting.” After a lifetime of banging starlets, Beatty may have liked Bening for her normalcy. She dressed down and wasn’t interested in LA hot spots. He fell for her “because she doesn’t behave like an actress,” Bening’s mother later said “She’s still herself.”
Bening grew up in Kansas, and her breakthrough role didn’t come until 1990’s “The Grifters,” for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
“Thank God fame didn’t happen to me until I was 30,” Bening said. “By then I had coping mechanisms.”
Life with her was very different from what Beatty had experienced with his previous squeeze, Madonna. The singer, who like most of Beatty’s squeezes was decades younger, dragged her boyfriend to loud clubs.
