Annette Bening on Mother and Child, Taking Risks, and Getting Wrong Right

I don't think enough people give you credit for the risks you take. This is a risky role. The Kids Are All Right is a risky role. Do you think of the characters that way?

I guess I'd like to. You never know.

I guess what I'm asking is how risk applies to your choices, if at all.

I don't know. I guess what I tend to respond to is something that's new and different that I don't know if I can do. I find that when I'm then drawn into a human being, I try as best I can to get all the colors. That includes flaws and other things that are not as palatable as others. I've played parts that were just likable people, and there's a certain pleasure in that. And that's that. It depends on the writing that you're being asked to do. In these characters, I'm drawn to the complexity and those imperfections. Somebody said something really smart: It's like you end up being the defense attorney for your role. Your job is to defend their point of view. You're fighting for what they want. You learn that in acting school -- it's Acting 1A: What do you want? What's in the way? Karen's got a lot of stuff in the way -- internally, externally, things that have happened to her, things that she did, all that history. But she wants to connect. She just doesn't know how in the beginning. And through a series of events she gets to better place.

I think that happens to people in middle age. It happens to a lot of women, and those stories don't often get told. I think you can learn; you can figure something out that's been a burden, and I think certainly she's someone who's been paralyzed by what happened to her: Getting pregnant when she was a kid and having to give the baby up. Not all women who went through that are like that. Many go on and raise children and have families. But it was an incredibly difficult experience for women who went through that -- giving up a child. Even when they're kids. This character was a kid when she did it. But the way that it was handled or mishandled? Going through childbirth? Signing the papers? A lot of the work I did learning about this specifically, many of them talk about the day they had to "sign the paper" -- signing the baby away. I found that very compelling, and I wanted to figure that out as best I could.

How much research can you do with something lik
e this, where confidentiality is by definition the nature of the system?

There are people who have been interviewed, and some books that are first-person accounts of people who say, "I went into labor, and my mother and father weren't there. I was alone in the delivery room." Or, "I spent two days with the baby, and then they took the baby..." Lots of specific stories about what women and girls went through. And I knew girls in high school who had gotten pregnant. I knew girls who had disappeared. Where did they go? Suddenly no one's talking about them. Or people are talking about them and they're gone. Girls who had secret abortions; by the time I was in high school, Roe v. Wade had passed, and there were girls having secret abortions. In many cultures, it's just not acceptable. So many girls go through this mistake of 20 minutes, and then the rest of their lives they're left with this experience.

Having had children, too, what that would physically be like to go through pregnancy as a young girl and then give a baby up? As I really began to think about it, I began to feel more sympathy for Karen. And I know other people [for whom] maybe this isn't the thing that paralyzed them, but who have really been stymied by things that have happened that rule their lives. A lot of people figure a way out of it; part of it's luck, part of it's will, part of it's mystery. I don't know that I can explain that, but I can see it. That's where the story is.

You've been doing one film a year for a while now, but you have two films this year and several more in development. Do you expect to work more frequently going forward?

Probably not. I have four kids -- three teenagers and a 10 year old. It's really that. I did two plays last year; I've actually worked more in the last year than I have recently. But these movies were both done last year in Los Angeles, so I could handle it. I have all these conditions on which I can work. But I've been able to pretty much keep my craft and -- just from a selfish point of view -- do something that I'm interested in doing. And I love it, and I find it very intriguing and difficult.

It's very odd in a way. We're sitting here talking about this movie, but when I'm there doing it, there's lots of uncertainty. you're trying to find these tiny little moments where you look up and... You just never know. "Is this working?" You don't know. So it's gratifying when something comes together and people are interested in it or moved by it or at least stimulated by it. So I've been able to find enough stuff to do, and plus I do theater. I can't do plays here in New York, not for a while. Hopefully I can come back when my kids are bigger and I can get away. But I like not being in the business. I like doing other things, and getting away, and reading, and seeing my friends. I mean it's always "busy" with four children; it's chaos. But it's different than trying to work all the time. And I have friends who do, and it's really hard. So I feel lucky that I can stop and start.

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