How much is Annette Bening worth?
| Net Worth: | $50 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Actress |
| Date of Birth: | May 29, 1958 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 1.69 m |
About Annette Bening
In Bugsy and American Beauty, you saw her snatching the affection of a lifetime bad boy both onscreen and off, as well as the hearts of both fans and critics.
In Topeka, Kansas, she was born Annette Francine Bening, the youngest of four kids. She didn’t have any theatrical experience until her father’s job relocated the family to San Diego when she was a junior in high school. She started acting in southern California, where she overcame her shyness as a teenager to play the lead in the middle school production of The Sound of Music and pursued drama at Patrick Henry High School.
Bening worked as a cook on a charter boat after graduating, saving money for a year, and then enrolled in theater programs at San Diego Mesa College and San Francisco State University. She also joined the American Conservatory Theater’s acting group at this time. Bening’s ambition to act had been ingrained by the time she was in her early 20s.
She was a pro at classical theater, and her portrayal of Lady Macbeth received great acclaim. She explains, “I aspired to be a classical actress. “It offered me the chance to enter the world as an adult and work in a provincial theater that not many people were interested in. I adored it and yearned to engage in such activity.”
Catching Beauty
She might have enjoyed it, but talent like Bening’s doesn’t stay local for very long. Her performance in Tina Howe’s Coastal Disturbances earned her a Tony Award nomination shortly after she relocated to New York.
Bening didn’t appear in her debut movie until 1988, when she was 30 years old and co-starred with Dan Aykroyd and John Candy in the otherwise forgettable The Great Outdoors.
Her next performance, as Merteuil in Milos Forman’s Valmont, would be less forgettable. Bening’s performance caught attention despite the film being less well-known and nearly identical to Stephen Frears’s most recent feature, Dangerous Liaisons. Frears was particularly struck with Bening and gave her her first major role as a seductive con artist in Grifters.
She received an Oscar nomination for Grifters, which also drew the attention of superstar and playboy Warren Beatty, who expressly chose her to play the female lead in his biography of Bugsy Malone.
In if she wasn’t already well-known, Bugsy would also have one unexpected benefit: Beatty, whose legendary sex life saw him fall in love one last time. In 1992, the two got married and went on to have four kids.
A Classical Actress
She withdrew from the spotlight for a few years due to her huge family and introverted nature, only emerging when the roles were perfect. As Queen Elizabeth in Richard III, she paid homage to her Shakespearean heritage while showcasing her comedic chops as a presidential love interest in The American President. She also outshone Kevin Spacey in the poignant and tragicomic American Beauty, garnering her second Academy Award nomination.
Since that time, Bening has continued to work slowly, taking on about one picture annually. But when she does, the outcomes are frequently amazing. She was a Golden Globe nominee for five of her ten performances between 1999 and 2010 (winning for Being Julia and The Kids are All Right), giving rise to some of cinema’s most lasting characters. Annette Bening has evolved into a classical actress of a completely different caliber, though it may not have been in the direction she had wanted.
“I guess for people who get followed around all the time it must be a nightmare. We had a bit of that but we weren’t scandalous for very long. Very quickly we had a kid and now it was just like, ‘Oh, they’re married and have a kid. Oh well!’”
