Annette Bening: The Hollywood Interview

Ben Kingsley and Annette Bening in HBO Films' Mrs. Harris.

ANNETTE BENING TAKES A WALK IN THE CHERRY ORCHARD WITH MRS. HARRIS
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article originally ran in the February 2006 issue of Venice Magazine

Annette Bening’s name first entered the cultural lexicon with her bravura turn in Stephen Frears’ 1990 modern noir thriller The Grifters. As Myra, a con artist with a heart of pure titanium, Bening ignited the screen with an old-school sexuality of the Marilyn Monroe mold, coupled with a fierce intelligence that lay behind her lovely eyes. It’s a paradigm she has held fast to since, starring in more than twenty feature films, portraying a bevy of complicated, alluring, fascinating women.

Born May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, Annette was the youngest of four children. Her family later relocated to San Diego, where Annette spent most of her formative years. After graduating from San Francisco State, Annette did extensive work with the Bay area’s renowned American Conservatory Theater (ACT), eventually making the move to New York, where she earned a Tony nomination for the 1987 production of Coastal Disturbances. After making her screen debut in the 1988 comedy The Great Outdoors, Annette’s stock rose when she was cast by the legendary Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus) in his period epic Valmont (1989). The Grifters followed the next year, with 1991 bringing both more lady luck, and fate into Ms. Bening’s life.
Bugsy starred Warren Beatty in the title role (and the greatest performance of his storied career) of gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, the man who invented Las Vegas, and tried to conquer Hollywood simultaneously. The role of his paramour, wannabe starlet Virginia Hill, was the most sought-after part in Hollywood. After Bening was cast, not only did she deliver a Golden Globe-nominated performance, but married her co-star, for years the most eligible bachelor in Tinseltown. Four children later, it remains one of show biz’s most enduring unions.
Annette Bening has received three Oscar nominations (The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia), and won a Golden Globe for last year’s Being Julia. Annette does double duty this month, with the excellent HBO original film Mrs. Harris in which she portrays convicted murderer Jean Harris, who in 1980, shot and killed her longtime lover, Dr. Herbert Tarnower, author of the best-selling Scarsdale Diet. Ben Kingsley (fine as ever) co-stars as Tarnower. Annette hits the boards this month, as well, in Anton Chekov’s classic The Cherry Orchard.
Annette Bening sat down with Venice recently to discuss her remarkable life, career, and love of the arts.

Mrs. Harris is a unique film because there are no villains. You can clearly see both points of view in the story. Plus, Jean Harris’ character was really a metaphor for that generation of women.
Annette Bening: You know what, I hadn’t thought of her that way, but I think that’s true. One of the great, bizarre things about Jean, because everything about her seems to have a duality, she would never allow the feminists to make her a hero. They wanted to adopt her, as a victim. And she didn’t want that. I do think that is that generation: the context of the whole event, and the nature of their relationship and the tragic end of it probably wouldn’t have happened had she not been a woman from that generation, from the Midwest, Smith-educated. Plus, she was an economics major, which was a fact I always found very demonstrative of her.

There was no gray area with that generation of men and women: everything was very black & white.
That’s true, and that coupled with that kind of person, coupled with her incredible obsession for this man, coupled with her economics-major brain, which enabled her to see the whole complicated relationship with a kind of clarity to the point where it wasn’t true. Nothing is that clear in life! We’re always looking for the thing that’s true, that’s beautiful, that we can nail down, but life is just much more complicated. But in the area of that relationship, she just seems so unconscious.

And of course his unconscious contribution to the relationship was to get her addicted to prescription drugs, which made her dependent on him.
I think you’re right. Sometimes you see so much, you can’t see the clear, simple thing. And they both, in their own way, had that kind of unconscious life that we all have. That’s the way we have of comforting ourselves: by looking at other people’s problems and saying “Look, it’s so clear!” (laughs)

Jean was a generation before my mother. And I remember in the early 70s, my parents’ generation was the first that was really affected by the women’s movement. Suddenly these women who had entered into very conventional marriages and role-playing the decade before decided they had to leave their husbands and children to go “find themselves.” And most of my parents’ friends got divorced during this time.I remember the same thing! I was in the houses of all those ladies, because I was their babysitter. I know exactly what you mean. My mom really went through it, too. She was a homemaker. She was someone for whom the traditional role was the only thing she could do. She was capable of doing more things, but she wasn’t really allowed to. Being a homemaker suited her very well, especially when we were younger. But when the woman’s movement struck, she felt very devalued. But she weathered it, and my parents are still married. They’ve been together 55 years. That whole time really needs to be dramatized. It would be a great story, because there were these factions within the movement. I met Bella Abzug once. She was a friend of Shirley’s. I said to her ‘Why did the woman’s movement devalue motherhood so much?’ It was a very sore subject for her, because she had children, as did Betty Friedan. They were dealing with the issues like going to the bank, and the bank not allowing them to have an account in their own name. Or, they went to law school and had to use their husband’s name. They felt the real bite of it, as well as having children, so they didn’t like hearing that the movement devalued motherhood, and they really resented that. Her response to it was basically “That’s a male conspiracy theory.” In other words, that’s a theory that’s been created over the years that is, in fact, wrong. We didn’t do that.” And then the women like Gloria Steinem and that crowd, didn’t have children, most of them. There’s a journalist named Anne Taylor Fleming called Motherhood Deferred, and she was part of what she called “the sacrificial generation,” which is actually a really interesting idea. She would be about 60 now. The book opens with her driving on the Santa Monica freeway with her husband’s sperm sample next to her, going for infertility treatment. She sort of woke up at 40 and said “Wait a minute! What about this baby thing? What happened?” The book is really about her going back and figuring out what it was being a feminist and being a liberated woman that had taken her away from that instinct, and in doing so, went back over Germaine Greer and Simone de Beauvoir, and all the books where she had underlined all the issues about children and how it was very complicated for her. She really made the point that (motherhood) was devalued, and a lot of women missed out. Even today, there is still a lot of struggle with what the roles are. Where does this modern cultural phenomenon stand where women can go to college and have jobs, where is the nexus with that and men and their lives, and what they need, and their work? How does that work in the house?

But don’t you see that as more of a struggle for the individual as opposed to a struggle on the societal level at this point?
Yes, I think you’re right. Women having lives outside the home is accepted now, and it’s now a question of people trying to work out their lives, and men who are feminists, and who believe in it! They want their wives to have a life outside of their home. So it’s a struggle on that level, as well. It’s very interesting.

And of course with Herman Tarnower and Jean Harris, there was a generation gap, too: 15 years age difference. He was an old school Jew from Brooklyn, and she was from the generation on the cusp of feminism.
Right. You talk about his unconscious, but one of the interesting things about him was there were a number of women he went through this pattern with. He was a serial practitioner of fall in love, get really crazy about somebody, ask them to marry you, and then back out. He did this repeatedly, not because he was a bad person, but because he genuinely felt that thing, but when he got to the brink, he’d pull out and say “I can’t do it.”

You’ve never played a simple woman. You’ve always played complex characters, so I imagine there’s one part of you that’s an amateur sociologist or psychologist.
Yeah, I am. It’s funny that there is that part of acting where you’re just interested in human behavior and interested in unconscious versus conscious motivation, how you can use your intellect to study, just as if you were a writer, or sociologist, or teacher, or any field where you study what makes people do what they do. But then what separates us as actors is that there’s this whole kind of emotional synthesis you’re looking for, where you then have to step away from your intellect completely in trying to absorb yourself. It’s like stepping away from all of that, and then hopefully something has percolated in your own unconscious which leads you to something that you’re not necessarily able to articulate in an intellectual way, but is expressed nevertheless.

When did you know that you were an actor?
When I went to the theater for the first time in junior high, my English teacher took us, I just fell in love with it. I think it was also the whole atmosphere around trying to make a play, and the crazy intimacy and bonding that goes on between a group of people who are working in the theater. It’s a place where everyone is accepted, where you can share vulnerability. So it was very much that atmosphere and the literature. I loved the studying of the classics.

You made your second feature with the great Milos Forman. What was he like?
He was incredible. I learned so much from him. I’m so grateful to him. He was so passionate and such a veteran already, that he was very specific about what he wanted. He wasn’t from the touchy-feely school of directing, so if you did something phony, which I was doing a lot, he would say “No, no! Stop that!” We all really bonded on that picture. Every time I see Colin Firth, we talk about it, because Milos was so tough on people, but he was always right. He would imitate you, the way you would do it badly. He would make fun of you, then would demonstrate how he wanted you to do it. He would almost overdo it, which was actually very effective. So I got used to it, and began to ask him to do that, and would say ‘Show me what you mean.’ He’s incredibly loyal, and funny, and I adore him. I had just done The Great Outdoors before that, so what did I know? (laughs)

Postcards From the Edge was the first of three films you did with Mike Nichols.There’s something about him, I wish I could put it into words. I just saw him the other night. Even in a social situation, he has the same quality, which is first of all you could be as funny as he is, which of course you never could be, but he makes you feel like you could. He’s delighted by people. He’s a great audience. He just makes you feel so sufficient, and I think he does that to people in general. And he’s just smart, smart as hell. He’s taught acting, and still does I think, in New York. He’s not interested in storytelling just from a cinematic point of view, either, but from a humanistic point of view.

The Grifters was the movie that really made you a star.It was a movie that where the world and mileu in which we made the movie, reflected it: we made it on the cheap, and it was sort of seedy, like the movie is, but there was also a great style in the picture, a style to the way that it looked. It was really designed brilliantly. It was due to the designer, much more than anything any of us, the actors, did. Plus, the source material was amazing: Jim Thompson was such an amazing writer.

One of my favorites. He’s an unheralded genius.
I think so, too! I read a few of his books to prepare for the film. I also read his autobiography, which was incredible! And he told the story of his childhood, and how he was a roughneck, and quit school to work on the oil rigs, but was a falling-down drunk, but he was also reading, and read all the classics. So he was literally living in Texas, working in the oil fields, drinking his head off, and reading the great classics of literature. You can see his life in his books: they’re very mythic.

Very alcoholic, too. Everybody is so damaged.
And the kind of disparate characters, too. There’s a character in the book The Grifters that wasn’t in the movie. There’s this woman named Carol who works in the hospital, she’s a Holocaust survivor who John’s character encounters when he goes to the hospital. Did you ever see that French film, Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981, based on Thompson’s novel, Pop. 1280)?

Oh, yeah.Isn’t that a great movie?

Yeah, and even reset in Equatorial Africa in the 30s with French actors, it still worked beautifully.
That’s the sign of a great source material, isn’t it?

After The Grifters, you did Bugsy, which changed your life in a number of ways, not the least of which you met your future husband, Warren Beatty. When you meet your significant other on a set, does it interfere with your job as an actor?
No, not at all. We didn’t want to be public about it, for all the obvious reasons. But then it’s also wonderful, and you’re happy and you’re excited. Those moments in your life when you’re in the middle of something that you sense is important, it’s magical. It was obviously a complicated situation, being a person who is going to be written about, whether you’re Warren or me. It adds this whole other layer to what you do. But in another way, all that becomes irrelevant if something is meaningful to you. Your sense of your own life transcends that, and you say ‘That’s just all bullshit. Who cares?’ You just live your life, and do what you’re going to do. So in a way it’s complicated, but in a way, it’s simple.

Tell us what Warren Beatty is like to collaborate with as an actor.
He’s generous. He’s very skilled. When he started in New York, he took about six months of classes with Stella Adler. They actually published a collection of her lectures on Strinberg, Chekov, and Ibsen, and of all the teachers who lectured on Chekov in particular, I think her insights are the most brilliant.

And from what I’ve heard, she made very complicated theories accessible to her students.
Yes, but without simplifying them.

I also understand she was a strict taskmaster.
From what I understand, the girls in the class had it tougher than the boys did. But if you were one of those people, like Warren was, that she thought was talented, you got from her what every actor wants to get: first of all, approval. (laughs) And I also think she taught him a lot of things that he still puts to use today. So as a professional, Warren is generous, collaborative, cooperative, professional, wants to make everyone feel comfortable, take care of everybody. That director/producer part of him is very much at work whenever he’s acting, as well. But he also really understands what the process is for an actor, and he understands talent, and how fragile most good actors are. There’s an incredible fragility that goes along with talent. When you’re dealing with the public’s perception of you versus who you really are, you have to have some sort of a strong inner core to go back to or it all gets really crazy. Otherwise, you lose track of what gives you pleasure, and what’s important.

You were in Ian McKellen’s film adaptation of Richard III, which was one of the most brilliant Shakespeare adaptations I’ve ever seen on film.
I love that film, and it was amazing to work with Ian, I just love him. The director of The Cherry Orchard is an old boyfriend of Ian’s, Sean Mathias. Ian is one of those people I admire enormously. He worked so hard on that picture, he loved it so much. Every day on that shoot, someone would come up and assure us “Don’t worry, the money’s in place.” You would never know because it’s such a beautiful movie. Shooting in London is really hard. They’re just not into making things easy for filmmakers, and they sure didn’t on that picture. They got great locations, but it was so brutal. The days were so insane. I remember one, where we’d done fifteen hours of shooting and we were moving to another location. I remember looking at the wardrobe girl, and she was just completely spent. But she never complained. Everyone believed in what we were doing.

The American President was a wonderful fantasy: Michael Douglas was sort of the amalgam of what everyone’s perfect President would be, and your character was that ideal of the First Lady.
That was really fun, of all the pictures I’ve made, when I run into people on the street, they comment on that movie. It was a great combination of talent: Michael, Rob Reiner, Aaron Sorkin who wrote the script and went on to do The West Wing, Martin Sheen, Richard Dreyfuss. Hard to go wrong with names like that on board!

The Siege turned out to be, unfortunately, a very prescient film, didn’t it?
Wasn’t that amazing? They were talking about blowback, the whole phenomenon of training these guys and then what you’ve taught them, they bring back to you. It was such a big picture, too, that’s what was so unusual about it. They really struggled with that part of it, trying to make something commercial that people would go see, yet they wanted to make a serious picture. Some writers are able to tap into something and really do foretell the future. Sometimes writers, more with fiction that non-fiction, I think are able to tap into that collective unconscious.

When you’re doing a film like American Beauty, do you know that you’re doing something special, or is it just another job at the time you’re in production?
That’s such a good question. I wish I knew. I think of all the things I’ve done, I’m thinking of one particular play that I did, when I was doing regional theater. It was a good play, Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw. It was well-cast. It was a joy to rehearse. It was a treasure to perform. And it was a great success. Sometimes there are unhappy circumstances around the rehearsal of a show, but a great show comes out of it. Sometimes they’re unhappy and the shows are terrible. Then sometimes you have a great time together, but the movie or the play turns out to be a big fucking bore! (laughs) American Beauty was a pleasure, but it was very hard. There was a lot of pain in it. So do you know? No, you don’t know, but you hope. I’m an optimist, although I’m not crazy about that word. I think if you do what we do, you have to have a sense of belief. Why do it otherwise? You fall in love with what you’re doing. You fall in love with the material. You fall in love with the writer, and you give it your all. I think I’m probably guilty of it on bad movies, as I am on good movies. But on that film, I did fall in love with the whole process. Sam Mendes is a very special person. It was his first picture, and we had to reshoot the first thing he shot, so no, we didn’t know. But Sam was smart: he saw that very first thing we shot wasn’t right, and that we had to reshoot it, so he had to go to the powers that be and beg for more money. And they were making the movie for a relatively small amount, and they gave him the extra money eventually. So much of it as an actor when you’re doing movies is about the director: they’re in charge. It’s their gig. You’re there to serve them. You’re in their hands. They cut you up. They decide what to use. You have to have a sense that the picture matters more than anything else in the world, but at the same time, you have to say ‘Well, this is not in my control, so I have to give this up.’ It’s a scary feeling. But with Sam, he’s so down to Earth: very bright, but not pretentious in any way. He has this incredible combination of confidence and humility. I don’t know what that is.

I thought Open Range was a terrific film, and probably the most elegiac American western since the films of Howard Hawks and John Ford. How was Kevin Costner as a director and co-star?
He was terrific. I’d love to work with Kevin again, either as an actor or director. The Canadian Rockies, where we filmed, were so majestic and beautiful. I got to take my kids with me, since it was during their summer vacation, and Warren came and spent some time with us, too. Kevin had a really great crew, and his cameraman (James Muro) was this really famous camera operator who knew his craft so well. Plus we had great old pros like Robert Duvall and Michael Gambon on the set. They’re both great raconteurs and would just entertain us between takes with story after story. It was a wonderful time.

Do Warren and the kids travel with you a lot?
Yeah, when I do travel. I don’t like to be out of town when the kids are in school, if I can help it. But sometimes we’re able to combine work with a vacation, which is nice.

I saw Being Julia with an actress friend, who’s probably in her mid-50s, and I thought she was going to burst with joy during the screening. She said that film was every actress’ revenge fantasy.
(laughs) That was a great job, I loved it. I loved being in Hungary. I have this affinity now with Hungarians. And the director, Istvan Szabo is like the king of Hungarian cinema. He’s the real deal, and we became great friends. Istvan was in Chekov’s house in Moscow recently and sent me some pictures. I actually owe him a “thank you” note. Istvan directs plays, too, and sometime in the last few years, he directed a production of Three Sisters, so we had a love of Chekov in common, which was nice.

Speaking of Chekov, you’re taking to the boards this month in Chekov’s last play, The Cherry Orchard. You’ve mentioned his name quite a few times during our talk. Is he your favorite playwright?
He sure is right now. God, he’s good. He’s such a good short story writer. I love his short stories. One thing I found out recently is that when he started out writing plays, he was already a national icon as an author. So the theater was this kind of risky foray for him. It gave him more money quickly. That’s one of the incredible ironies about Chekov: he was doing it to make money, when he started, and then he started to write for himself, which I find really wonderful. He’s just a great writer, who wrote about love, all the time. He wrote with such empathy for everybody: whether you’re the guy who brings in the bags, or the lord of the manor. He really understood and was able to write with that empathy, but didn’t make it schmaltzy. He could be funny, and absurd. He was right before the Revolution happened. He died in 1904. I would love to have met him, along with Shaw!

What else can you tell us about the play?
Well, he died very soon after he completed it, so he was writing a lot about illness and death. It’s about this very creepy family and the people around them, all of whom have lives that are in total upheaval. It spans as a literary work, all of the great themes. We have a terrific cast, and as I said, Sean Mathias is directing and is phenomenal, and we’re all just trying to bring it to life, and make it necessary. What’s the point of doing these plays, otherwise? You have to make a reason. For those of us who love Chekov and love theater, that’s reason enough, but for others, you have to make it alive. So that’s what we’re trying to do. His plays are very modern, very quixotic, and that’s why they’re so difficult to do. They’re not polemic. This is where Stella Adler was so brilliant when she articulated what Chekov did: she talked about what was so elusive in his work. It was so much about the subtext, so much like life! Sometimes when I’m having a conversation, especially with my husband, I can hear the subtext almost more loudly than I can hear the text, because we’ve been together so long and every conversation and every eye blink has a subtext. Every word and every expression is so loaded and has so much behind it, that’s how we experience our lives. That’s the nature of day-to-day living, and that’s how he wrote.