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Like many talented actors do, Bening began her career on stage. She started with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival company in 1980, and later at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco she starred as Lady Macbeth.
The youngest of four, Bening was born in Topeka, Kansas, and spent her early childhood in Wichita, before her father, a sales training consultant and insurance salesman, moved their family to San Diego, California. No "nepo baby" here.
She began acting in junior high school, reportedly landing the lead in 'The Sound of Music.' Later, she graduated in 1975 from San Diego's Patrick Henry High School, where she studied drama, and after that received a degree in Theatre Arts at San Francisco State University.
It's like a rite of passage for an actor to work an odd job or two while they wait for agents and productions to notice them. Between high school and college, Bening reportedly spent a year working as a cook on a charter boat taking fishing parties and scuba divers out on the Pacific Ocean.
Bening and Beatty were married in 1992, and since then they have remained one of the most solid couples in show business. They also have four children together.
A surprising number of actors also started on Broadway before making it to our screens. Bening made her Broadway debut in 1987 with 'Coastal Disturbances,' and earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for it.
In the same year, 1995, Bening played the female lead in Rob Reiner's 'The American President' opposite Michael Douglas, as well as Queen Elizabeth in 'Richard III.'
Bening started to gain real appraisal when she played the manipulative marquise de Merteuil opposite Colin Firth in Miloš Forman's 'Valmont' (1989).
Bening starred in 'American Beauty' (1999) as the materialistic wife Carolyn Burnham, and the film won five Academy Awards, including for Best Picture. Bening herself received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Bening received a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006, before she even embarked on some of the best films she has ever starred in.
For her lead role as the real-life convicted murderer Jean Harris in the made-for-TV drama 'Mrs. Harris' (2006), Bening was also nominated for an Emmy, adding to her list of prefixes.
Bening has remained in that strange club of amazing actors who have never won an Oscar.
Just as many stars did in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Bening continued her professional relationship with her husband. She appeared in 'Rules Don't Apply' (2016), which was written and directed by Beatty.
In 2012, Bening lent her voice to the audiobook version of Virginia Woolf's classic tale 'Mrs Dalloway,' and her performance was praised by critics for its ability to capture the essence of Woolf's characters.
Her son Stephen is a transgender activist and a poet, and Bening told The Observer, "I'm super proud of him" in 2017. Asked about their long silence since Stephen came out over a decade ago, Bening replied, "I leave it to him to say what he wants about his life. I don't think it's fair for me to speak for any of my kids, quite frankly."
"The only other thing I've ever done that has given me as much satisfaction and joy as acting is teaching," she said in a Q&A with Dodge College. "I might try to teach more. I do try to do [masterclasses] pretty regularly."
Bening is the Vice Chair of the Entertainment Community Fund, formerly The Actors Fund, which is a charitable organization that supports diversity, stable livelihood, equity, and more in the performing arts.
In that same Q&A, she told students, "I hope that all of you think about doing your own material, and are finding things that you want to work on. I hope you are all developing material that means a lot to you. I wasn't trained that way. Now that my kids are grown, I am in a different part of life. I have the time to pursue that kind of work."
Her first Tony nomination was for 'Coastal Disturbances' (1987), and then 32 years later she returned to the Broadway stage and proved she hadn't missed a beat, earning another nomination for her role in 'All My Sons' (2019).'
Annette Bening has lived out one of the closest approximations to the quintessential actor’s life that exists in our collective imagination. It’s not by any means a modern one, which is good since that typically involves much public scandal and Bening has had very little drama off-screen. No, Bening instead has demonstrated what is perhaps the ideal path both into and up the ranks of Hollywood, and she has the credits and accolades to prove it.
From her first steps on stage to the legacy she leaves in her wake, click through to learn more about why Annette Bening is an actor’s actress.
The final criteria that Bening has achieved as an actor's actress is that she has been given her flowers while she's still here to smell them!
Sources: (Chapman University) (Britannica) (IMDb)
Bening came full circle and played an aging actress in the melodrama 'Being Julia' (2004), for which she received her third Oscar nod.
Bening starred opposite Julianna Moore in 'The Kids Are All Right' (2010), which is a dramedy about a married lesbian couple whose two children go looking for their birth father.
Bening, like so many other actors revered for their dramatic performances, first entered Hollywood through comedy. Her film debut was 'The Great Outdoors' (1988), starring Canadian comedy giants Dan Aykroyd and John Candy.
Bening and Beatty reinforced every actor couple trope they could, including starring in a film together as a married couple. 'Love Affair' (1994) was not a success, but it was an undeniable actor move.
Bening met long-time eligible bachelor Warren Beatty in 1991 on set of the biopic 'Bugsy,' where they co-starred as mobster Bugsy Siegel and his girlfriend Virginia Hill. Beatty had previously been hard to pin down, despite high-profile romances with everybody from Madonna to actress Natalie Wood, but he later said it took him "seven or eight seconds" to realize Bening was the one.
'20th Century Women' (2016) is a great example, as she plays a determined single mother who gets help from a free-spirited artist (Greta Gerwig) and her teenage neighbor (Elle Fanning) to raise her adolescent son (Lucas Jade Zumann).
Bening was introduced to the MCU in 'Captain Marvel' (2019) as Wendy Lawson, a brilliant research scientist who's secretly a Kree alien named Mar-Vell.
It's almost the mark of excellence if an actor can take on the role of being a fellow actor. Bening starred as Oscar-winning actress Gloria Grahame in 'Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool' (2017).
Bening received her first Oscar nomination for her supporting role in the neo-noir 'The Grifters' (1990), alongside stars John Cusack and Anjelica Huston. This was the film that marked her true breakout role.
How Annette Bening carved out the quintessential actor's journey
The quietly prolific star turns 65 this May 29
CELEBRITY Retrospective
Annette Bening has lived out one of the closest approximations to the quintessential actor’s life that exists in our collective imagination. It’s not by any means a modern one, which is good since that typically involves much public scandal and Bening has had very little drama off-screen. No, Bening instead has demonstrated what is perhaps the ideal path both into and up the ranks of Hollywood, and she has the credits and accolades to prove it.
From her first steps on stage to the legacy she leaves in her wake, click through to learn more about why Annette Bening is an actor’s actress.