THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 22, 1994 TAG: 9410220050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long : 197 lines
THE NAME of the movie is ``Love Affair'' and it stars Mr. and Mrs. Warren Beatty.
Only three years ago, not even the most risky gambler would have taken odds on such a billing. Warren Beatty, the Oscar-winning boy from Richmond, a major movie leading man for 30 years, has managed to avoid the wedding chapel the way pepper stays away from salt. He's been nominated for 13 Academy Awards; the six movies he produced received 52 nominations.
His other career, as a noted lothario, has included romances with some of the most beautiful women in the world: Natalie Wood, Julie Christie, Leslie Caron, Diane Keaton, Isabelle Adjani and Madonna.
As the world premiere of ``Love Affair'' unreeled, an unexpected, and big, laugh rang through the theater when one of the characters said, ``He's never been faithful to anyone in his life.''
The next morning, Annette Bening, the beautiful, sophisticated Mrs. Beatty, laughed a little herself.
``I'm not surprised that line got a laugh,'' she said. ``I suppose, thinking of it today, the picture does parallel our lives - a little. But I never really thought there would be that comparison. I guess I was naive. The line wasn't written for Warren. Charles Boyer and Cary Grant had the same line in their versions.''
``Love Affair'' concerns two people who fall unexpectedly and deeply in love on a luxury liner, even though both are engaged to others. He is a noted playboy. She is a singer dedicated to her career. They agree to separate for three months. If they still love each other, they'll meet atop the Empire State Building. On the way there, something happens to her. He thinks she changed her mind. It looks as if they are destined never to meet again.
It is not exactly a new plot. In 1939, Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer created the roles. The famous 1957 remake was called ``An Affair to Remember'' and starred Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant. Its plot was even the running gag in the recent hit ``Sleepless in Seattle.''
Annette Bening and Warren Beatty met at a pizza restaurant in a shopping mall in 1990 when he was considering casting her as gangster moll Virginia Hill opposite his Bugsy Siegel in ``Bugsy.'' She got the part, and she got him.
``It took me about 30 seconds to know that she was the one,'' Beatty admitted, sitting at the Regency Hotel in Manhattan. ``The thing is that she is so gifted and yet so normal at the same time. I never met anyone at all like her. She knows how to laugh and she knows how to enjoy life.''
They were married a year later.
Now, he knows how to get up in the middle of the night to change diapers.
Things were a little tense at the moment because Kathlyn, the couple's 2-year-old daughter, had dislocated her shoulder earlier in the day when her nanny lifted her by the arms. ``She's all right,'' Beatty said. ``The shoulder jumped back into place. We're told these things happen regularly with children.'' (They also have an infant daughter.)
Reminded that it was perhaps his own playboy baggage that prompted that big laugh the night before, Beatty shrugged.
``Cary Grant came with the same baggage,'' he said. ``If you weren't married at 11 or 12 and stayed with the same person all your life, you have some baggage, let's face it. I never thought of casting anyone but myself in the part. It never occurred to me, but, at the same time, I didn't think anyone would think it was autobiographical. The movie is a male fantasy, I suppose, that we all are redeemable.''
Then he added, sheepishly, ``I'm not as bad as people think I am, you know.''
This is a new Warren Beatty. At 57, the obsession with privacy that has kept interviewers at a distance is largely gone. I first interviewed him in 1975 when he was working on ``Shampoo.'' It was a disaster. He didn't want to talk - about anything. He's still wary of writers.
``I can't forget what Norman Mailer did to Madonna,'' he said, referring to an unflattering article Mailer wrote.
But Beatty talks freely about his two favorite subjects - his wife and his new movie.
``Anyone would be a fool to tamper with this plot,'' he said. ``We tried to modernize it, but not change it. It's the same string, but the pearls are different. It's not a momentous movie. It's just a simple little picture that, hopefully, will move people.''
On why there are not more love stories in the theaters today, he reasoned, ``I think that you simply can't put together a 30-second TV commercial to sell them. Our TV commercial is quiet. It looks as if nothing is happening. You have to see the picture, with the setup, to get an idea of what is going on. We don't have any car crashes.
``For a time, in the 1970s, you couldn't make a picture like this. People had to get in bed and do it right away or the picture was considered square. We don't have a sex scene in this movie. Sex scenes bore me. What kind of sex scene could we do that audiences haven't seen before? I don't know how to do those scenes without making fun of them.
``Making `Love Affair' today is a little like standing up at a rap concert and singing `Danny Boy,' '' Beatty continued. ``I just don't think you should change the tune of `Danny Boy' just because the setting is different. You can still have a good time.
``They're calling this a women's picture but both men and women like to look at life as something that changes for the better.''
Born Warren Beaty in Richmond in 1937, he started acting as a child with older sister Shirley MacLaine in amateur productions directed by their mother. Raised in the Washington, D.C., area, he briefly attended Northwestern University, then was a construction worker before going to New York to study acting with Stella Adler.
His first work came through television; his Broadway break came in William Inge's ``A Loss of Roses.'' Beatty's 1961 movie debut was momentous, starring with Natalie Wood in ``Splendor in the Grass,'' directed by Elia Kazan. His antihero personality appealed particularly to young audiences, reaching its peak with ``Bonnie and Clyde'' in 1967. Because he also produced the movie, it made him a millionaire.
``Warner Bros. tried to get out out the deal to make `Bonnie and Clyde,' '' he recalled, laughing. ``They said I was crazy; that those pictures went out with Jimmy Cagney.'' He received an Oscar nomination for best actor. The picture received 10 nominations and made millions.
His directorial debut was even more momentous, a remake of the classic ``Here Comes Mr. Jordan'' called ``Heaven Can Wait'' (1978). It got nine nominations, including his nods for actor and director.
``Like `Love Affair,' it was a remake, but not an identical remake,'' Beatty said. ``I had wanted to make it with Muhammad Ali, a good friend of mine, starring as the boxer. When he couldn't make it because he was fighting too much, I decided to make it starring myself and change the sport from boxing to football.'' The film was a huge box office hit.
He finally won the Oscar, as best director, for ``Reds.'' He was nominated as actor, director, writer and producer on both ``Heaven Can Wait'' and ``Reds,'' a feat that matched Orson Welles for ``Citizen Kane.''
I first met Annette Bening backstage at Manhattan's Theater-in-the-Round where she was starring in ``Coastal Disturbances,'' a Yuppie treatment of the comedic aspects of pregnancy. She had tried, and failed, in Hollywood.
``I wanted to be in movies, but I didn't know how to go about it,'' she said. ``My training was all on stage, so I went to New York with the express plan to get in a good play, and get noticed.'' It happened just that way.
Now, she's had an Oscar nomination of her own - as best supporting actress for ``The Grifters.'' It was one of the best bad-girl roles in years. She continued her villainous, teasing, ways in ``Valmont'' (rent it) and ``Bugsy.'' She was less impressive when she played nicer ladies in ``Regarding Henry'' with Harrison Ford and ``Guilty by Suspicion'' with Robert De Niro.
Marriage has kept her off the screen the past two years. Pregnancy forced her to give up playing Catwoman in ``Batman Returns.'' The role went to Michelle Pfeiffer. More recently, she gave up ``Disclosure,'' the film version of Michael Crichton's novel. She was replaced by Demi Moore.
``I'm not suffering because of these decisions,'' said Bening, 36. ``When I met Warren I was 32 and the biological clock was ticking. I didn't fall in love with him instantly. I was wary. If he hadn't wanted to have children, it wouldn't have worked.
``I know you don't win any awards for getting up in the middle of the night, but the children are worth it. We want to have a third. Sure, I read some scripts and I think, `What a good part that would be, but could I take the children along?' My daughters were on the set every day on `Love Affair.' ''
Bening feels her own stable family background helps keep all the public attention in perspective. Born in Topeka, Kan., she's the youngest of four children. Her parents have been married 45 years.
``I can't really care what people write, or say, about Warren and me,'' she said. ``If I did, I'd go crazy. Sometimes, you want to call up a writer and say `It isn't really like that,' but you don't. My mother likes that I'm in magazines. She reads them and laughs. It really is an adaptable life. I can go to the grocery store and not be bothered. It's not a problem, really.
``There have been times when a photographer jumps from behind a bush, takes a picture of us, and runs. It's silly, because we'd let him take the picture, if he only took one. We just don't want photos of the children. We have a public job. We both know that. It's a matter of adjusting. No big problem. I love cheap gossip myself. I read it about other people.''
Her next project will take her to India to make a movie called ``Lila.'' Beatty's going to work on a long-delayed film on the life of Howard Hughes, and that's a scoop. ``I shouldn't tell you that,'' he said. ``I haven't told anyone else, but I think Howard Hughes' life would make a great movie.''
He's given up on any plans to make a movie on the life of Edgar Cayce. ``No one has been able to come up with a good script,'' he said, even though several writers have been in Virginia Beach researching the project.
You get the feeling that Bening can more than hold her own in this relationship.
As for Beatty, the former rounder, he said, ``We still go to parties, but we leave early. Being a daddy has changed my perspective. You suddenly ask yourself `How much time do we have now?' Children are everything. They're the key to understanding what is important.''
This is, indeed, a different Warren Beatty - even down to a ``Love Affair'' with a PG-13 rating. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Warner Bros.
DAVID JAMES/Warner Bros.
As in real life, Annette Bening and Warren Beatty star as a couple
who fall in love unexpectedly in ``Love Affair.''
by CNB