Annette Bening names her favourite movie of all time
There’s nothing wrong with an actor being completely biased when naming their favourite movie they’ve ever worked on, even when it involves a performer as accomplished as Annette Bening. With four Oscar nominations, two Tony nods, a Primetime Emmy nomination for her small-screen efforts, and two Golden Globe wins to her name, her track record of consistency and continued acclaim is right up there with the best of them.
And yet, when asked by The View to name the film that stands out as her personal highlight, her answer was completely and utterly biased: “Well, I’d have to say Bugsy because that’s when I met my husband.” That being said, having been married to Warren Beatty since March 1992, with the couple still going strong after three decades, she’s well within her rights.
Of course, Beatty was notorious for his romantic life prior to settling down, creating a tabloid frenzy whenever he was spotted out and about with anybody. Clearly, Bening must have made a monumental impact on the reformed hellraiser, who decided she was the only person he wanted to be with for the rest of his days.
As Beatty told People, after meeting Bening for the first time on set, he told director Barry Levinson that he was “going to marry her”. She did admit that he was “well-known for being popular with women,” which clearly remained the case after she rather salaciously revealed that “when he looked at me, I got pregnant”.
The biographical drama was hardly a runaway success at the box office, but it proved plenty popular among critics and awards bodies. The film would end up being nominated for nine Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Actor,’ winning ‘Best Art Direction’ and ‘Best Costume Design’ in the end.
It was only the seventh big-screen credit of Bening’s career and came only three years after her debut in The Great Outdoors, too. That is why securing a first Golden Globe nomination, a husband, and ultimately the father of her four children out of the bargain gave her everything she’d ever wanted and more, especially after she’d branded motherhood as “something I always wanted to do”.
All things considered, it makes perfect sense that Bening would choose Bugsy as her favourite movie, given what it meant to her on a personal and professional level. Of course, she has also since gone on to appear in critical darlings and commercial sensations, including The American President, Mars Attacks!, American Beauty, Captain Marvel, Death on the Nile, and countless more.
Beatty would tell Entertainment Weekly that “when I met Annette over lunch for Bugsy, I felt immediately that this was going to change my life,” with that feeling turning out to be reciprocated and then some.
