Annette Bening

Annette Carol Bening (born May 29, 1958) is an American actress.

In a career spanning more than four decades, she has received many accolades, including a BAFTA Award and two Golden Globes as well as nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, and five Academy Awards.

Annette Carol Bening was born on May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, to Shirley Katherine (née Ashley) and Arnett Grant Bening.

Her mother was a church singer and soloist, and her father was a sales training consultant and insurance salesman.

Her parents, originally from Iowa, were practicing Episcopalians and conservative Republicans.

She is of mostly German and English descent.

The youngest of four children, she has an older sister Jane, and two older brothers Bradley and Byron.

The family moved to Wichita, Kansas, in 1959, where she spent her early childhood.

When Bening was in elementary school, her father relocated the family to San Diego, California, where she spent the remainder of her youth.

She began acting in junior high school, playing the lead in The Sound of Music.

She graduated in 1975 from San Diego's Patrick Henry High School, where she studied drama.

She then spent a year working as a cook on a charter boat taking fishing parties out on the Pacific Ocean, and scuba diving for recreation.

Bening attended San Diego Mesa College and graduated with a degree in Theatre Arts at San Francisco State University.

Bening began her career on stage with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival company in 1980, and played Lady Macbeth in 1984 at the American Conservatory Theater.

Bening began her career on stage with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival company in 1980, and appeared in plays at the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

She was a member of the acting company at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco while studying acting as part of the Advanced Theatre Training Program.

There, she starred in such productions as Shakespeare's Macbeth as Lady Macbeth.

Bening also starred in productions of Pygmalion and The Cherry Orchard at the Denver Center Theatre Company during the 1985–86 season.

She made her Broadway debut in the Tina Howe play Coastal Disturbances (1987) for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

She made her Broadway debut in 1987, garnering a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play and receiving a Theatre World Award for her performance in Coastal Disturbances.

Bening made her film debut in The Great Outdoors (1988), starring Dan Aykroyd and John Candy.

Her next role was as the Marquise de Merteuil in Valmont (1989) opposite Colin Firth.

Her other notable films include Postcards from the Edge (1990), Bugsy (1991), Richard III (1995), The American President (1995), 20th Century Women (2016), Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017), The Seagull (2018), The Report (2019), Captain Marvel (2019), and Death on the Nile (2022).

She serves as Vice Chair on the board of trustees for The Actors Fund.

She made her breakout role in The Grifters (1990), in which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1991, she portrayed Virginia Hill in Barry Levinson's biopic Bugsy, alongside Warren Beatty.

Bening co-starred with Harrison Ford in Regarding Henry.

She has been married to actor Warren Beatty since 1992.

In 1994, Bening and Beatty starred together again, in Love Affair.

In 1995, Bening played a leading role in The American President, with Michael Douglas, a role she followed with Tim Burton's sci-fi spoof Mars Attacks! (1996), and The Siege (1998), a thriller with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis.

She played the title role in a Geffen Playhouse production of Hedda Gabler (1999).

Bening won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for playing a materialistic wife in American Beauty (1999), and received nominations for five Academy Awards for her roles in The Grifters (1990), American Beauty, Being Julia (2004), The Kids Are All Right (2010), and Nyad (2023).

She gained acclaim for her starring role in Sam Mendes' directorial debut film American Beauty (1999).

Bening starred opposite Kevin Spacey in the dark comedy about a man suffering a mid-life crisis in 90s American suburbia.

The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

For her performance as the materialistic wife Carolyn Burnham, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.

In 1999, Bening returned to the stage for the first time in 10 years playing the title role in Hedda Gabler at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Times praised her performance saying "Bening uses her vocal instrument to fine effect, without throwing it around... In the movies you don't always hear what Bening can do with that voice, especially when she's playing virtuous, "sensible" types... But Ibsen's antiheroine—thwarted sensualist, a woman wrestling with her inner troll, belle of a ball that never comes—is neither virtuous nor sensible. She's no easy-to-read villain, either, nor a mere vindictive brat, though plenty of actresses have reduced her thus. Bening lays into the venomous sarcasm mighty heavily, but she's cagey enough to avoid reductive extremes."

She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for playing the title role in the television film Mrs. Harris (2005).

She returned to Broadway in the revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons (2019) earning another Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Play.