Annette Bening: A Private Star

Q: What will you tell your children about experimenting with drugs?

A: You can't keep your kids from doing it--if you think you can, you're very naive. With my kids I hope I could be honest and tell them what it's like and say, "I understand, I can't control what you're going to do. If you choose to do them you're going to choose to do them." It's the same with sex. Why fool yourself and your children about that?

Q: Does religion figure into this at all? How were you raised?

A: Episcopalian. But I don't practice any religion right now, and I don't know what we're going to do concerning the children.

Q: Whose idea was it to get married, yours or Warren's?

A: We sort of did it together. It seemed the natural thing to do with us.

Q: Somehow marriage and Warren Beatty never seemed exactly natural. Did his reputation concern you at all?

A: No, no, it didn't.

Q: Were you prepared for the intense media interest in you guys?

A: No. No. How could you ever be prepared for that? In retrospect, it's all sort of hilarious.

Q: How good a father is he?

A: Totally involved. Loves the kids. A very concerned father. Very affectionate.

Q: Does he change diapers?

A: Sure. He doesn't change them a lot, but he changes them.

Q: How long did you nurse?

A: I nursed Kathlyn for a long time, eight months. I won't go as long this time.

Q: Didn't you once appear on "Sesame Street" for your daughter?

A: I did it when she was a baby, a year-and-a-half ago. I did it for her mainly, but she never says, "Mommy, I want to watch it." I had a request--I wanted to work with Grover and with Cookie Monster because when I was a kid and I was babysitting, that's when "Sesame Street" happened. I fell in love with all these characters and especially Grover. So they accommodated me. I got to work with Grover, who is Frank Oz, who also does Cookie Monster. It was really fun, and very fast. I have great respect for that show. I felt honored to be part of it.

Q: When you're working, can you look at yourself objectively?

A: As an actor? No. I'm better than when I first started. I'd never seen myself act and so I found it very jarring when I began doing films, because I realized how much I depended on an illusion in my head about how I looked.

Q: What was the biggest realization you had about film?

A: I was naive. I didn't understand at first that you're there for the director and you have to really give up your performance, literally, to be sane about it.

Q: Would you consider acting better therapy than seeing a psychiatrist?

A: If you use it for that it can be very dangerous. There's no question that you can explore aspects of yourself through roles that you play and you get a chance to investigate yourself, that's healthy and it's therapeutic in a way. But if you're indulging yourself, exploration at the cost of the story or the project, that's not good. I don't like self-indulgence in people's work or in my own. If it's good writing, you have too much responsibility to what the writer's conception is and it's not about you. I wouldn't want to do a lot of therapy because I wouldn't want to uncover all of my demons. Those demons that haven't been dug out of the unconscious are useful.

Q: You definitely sound like someone who's had formal training. Was it at ACT where you played a pregnant Lady Macbeth?

A: That was the idea of the director. Oh God, when I think about that now, I don't know how successful that was. It was probably pretty awful.

Q: Didn't you also teach during your time at ACT?

A: One summer. I loved it. I really, really loved it. It was the summer I got married.

Q: How long were you married to your first husband?

A: Six years. We were together nine years.

Q: How difficult was your divorce?

A: Terrible. It was really painful.

Q: Do you still have contact with him?

A: Yeah. We're very close and I really love him. I'm lucky.

Q: When did you start thinking about the movies?

A: When I was in college. And when I was at ACT I came down here and I felt real awkward. I didn't want to talk to anybody, I didn't know how to go in for these interviews. I would see other girls and they looked so hip, they were all much more comfortable than I was. I was very nervous, so I didn't think I could get into film by doing auditions. I felt I could get in by doing a play. That's why I went to New York.

Q: Did getting a Tony nomination for Coastal Disturbances change your life, make you feel like you had made it?

A: Oh, it doesn't feel like that. I was just working really hard, going out on anything I could go out on--TV, film projects.

Q: You landed a TV pilot ["It Had To Be You"] that actually got picked up--only you were dropped?

A: I was devastated. I thought, I'm a terrible actress, I'm not going to work on camera. I really felt hurt.

Q: What did your first film experience, The Great Outdoors, teach you?

A: That there was a tremendous amount of money spent. That people behave badly and there's a lot of lack of discipline.

Q: Did you also learn that the film was nothing like the script?

A: Yeah. Because these guys were ad-libbing a lot. Anything they said was always better than what had been written. It was really a kick.

Q: Was Valmont also a kick, in spite of the fact that Stephen Frears was making a similar film, Dangerous Liaisons, at the same time?

A: I was up for both films and I was glad I got that part. I was in Paris, I was playing this period part--God, it was a total dream come true for me.

Q: Valmont's director, Milos Forman, said that you were so perfect he thought you were fooling him. Many people have talked about your mystery.

A: I always think that's strange. I don't feel like a mysterious person. I feel like I have no mystery and that it's just something people write because otherwise there would be nothing to write about. I think Milos was just trying to be flattering or to say something provocative.

Q: How ironic was it that after you finished with Forman you went to work for Frears on The Grifters?

A: I wasn't the first choice for that, I think Geena Davis was offered the part. But Milos showed some of Valmont to Stephen, which was incredibly generous of him. He is a true friend, Milos.

Q: Without The Grifters do you think your career would be where it is today?

A: Probably not.

Q: Didn't you research that part by reading a book about American women in crime?

A: Actually, yes, I found it on a rack at the drug store. It looked like a really cheesy book [Good Girls Gone Bad: American Women in Crime] but they were first-person interviews, so they were very valuable.

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