The talent, the deep voice, the luminous screen presence: Annette Bening has it all. Add to that a sharp mind and impeccable taste in her choice of roles, and what you get is a truly successful career. As the seven-time Golden Globe nominee and two-time winner turns 65, we take a look back and look forward at her accomplishments.
The girl from Topeka, Kansas who grew up in California always knew what she wanted out of life. She began her acting career with the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, then moved to New York where she did the stage work that led to a Tony nomination for “Coastal Disturbances”. She first got noticed onscreen in Milos Forman’s Valmont (1989), where she played Madame de Merteuil. The Grifters a year later was her breakthrough film which earned her the first of four Oscar nominations.
Within a year she got the role as Bugsy Siegel’s gangster moll Virginia Hill in Bugsy where she told Warren Beatty to “go jerk yourself a soda” in front of the camera while falling in love with him behind the scenes, resulting in marriage and four children.

Always making room for her family first, she picked roles as varied as the president’s girlfriend in The American President, a social-climbing, unfaithful wife  in American Beauty, a 1930s actress in Being Julia for which she won her first Globe, and a mother in a same-sex marriage in The Kids Are Alright. She won her second Golden Globe for the latter, which resulted in a wonderful and funny acceptance speech at the 2012 Globe Awards.
After her win, she told us the origin of said speech: “This morning I looked at my husband and I said, “So what was the first year you went to the Golden Globes?” And he said that it was in 1962, when he won for Most Promising Actor. And I just thought that was so adorable. So, I made a little mental note and I thought, “Oh, maybe I’ll get a chance to say that.” She did. As her name was called and she had thanked everyone involved in the film, she quipped: “Thank you to my children for all of your love andsupport. And to the 1962 winner of the Golden Globe for Most Promising Actor, my husband, Warren Beatty.”
Outside the ceremony there was an anti-gay demonstration going on, targeting the film and the awards. Bening proved that she does not shy away from speaking her mind and came to everyone’s defense for honoring and highlighting a movie with such an important topic.
“All the more reason to be grateful to the Golden Globes and to be able to see beyond that and not get caught up in that kind of narrow-mindedness. And maybe if enough of us keep doing what we’re doing and you’re speaking in the way that you’re speaking and writing in the way that you write, maybe that will all begin to change a little bit more.”
Taking long breaks between films – a habit she shares with her husband who has always put life and family above Oscars and accolades – she recently got busy again and now has four upcoming projects.
She stars in Chris Pine’s directorial debut The Poolman alongside Danny DeVito and Jennifer Jason Leigh, followed by a title role in Nyad where she plays the 64-year-old marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, who attempted to become the first person ever to swim from Cuba to Florida. Both films are in post-production and slated to come out this year. She also completed a TV-movie called Other Plans in which she plays the lead and is in pre-production for the series Apples Never Fall about the disappearance of a wife and mother.
These four projects are as different from one another as can be and in a nutshell a perfect description of a career that spans across all platforms and genres. As she once told an interviewer: “Acting is not about being famous, it’s about exploring the human soul.”