Annette Bening on De-Glamming for '20th Century Women': 'I Really Want to Go With It and Play the Age That I Am'

By Caryn James, Yahoo Movies

While a lot of actors stay on automatic pilot and on message while promoting their projects, Annette Bening is casual and engaged while chatting up her new movie 20th Century Women (in theaters now). Her curiosity sends the conversation in unexpected directions, yielding some delightful if slightly extraneous facts. You can learn why the gray hair she has in the movie is hard to create (gray is the absence of pigment) and hear about one of her favorite unsung films of the year.

Given the depth and realism of her performances, Bening’s quicksilver mind is no surprise. She dazzled audiences early on as a femme fatale in The Grifters (1990), mid-career as an unhappy suburban wife in American Beauty (1999), and more recently as half of a couple with Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right (2010).

Off screen, she’s one of the few people in the world who can refer to “my husband,” and you know exactly who she means. That would be Warren Beatty, her husband of 24 years and father of their four children. She has a small, vivid part in the 2016 movie he directed, Rules Don’t Apply, which features Beatty as Howard Hughes, and Bening as the protective mother of the aspiring actress played by Lily Collins.

But 20th Century Women, which has earned her a Golden Globes nomination, is Bening’s triumph. It’s a sharply-drawn comic drama in which she plays Dorothea, a true original inspired by writer-director Mike Mills’ (Beginners) mother and his own adolescence in 1979 Santa Barbara. A single mom, Dorothea enlists other women, played by Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning, to help her raise her 15-year-old son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann). As Jamie earnestly, yet comically, describes her, “She smokes Salems because they’re healthier. She wears Birkenstocks because they’re contemporary.”

Looking chic and nothing like her character, Bening recently sat down with Yahoo Movies in New York to talk about age — she is 58 and apparently not afraid of it — parents, Hollywood, and her next movie.

You are playing a version of Mike Mills’ mother, who died in 1999. What was it like, having your character’s son direct you?
At the beginning, I would just have him talk about his mom endlessly, and I would listen. Then things began to contradict each other. I realized what a virtue that was because most of us have these dualities.

What were her contradictions?
He would tell me about how generous she was to people. But she was also very closed off and unapproachable. She seemed to have a great sense of humor, and he would call her a trickster — which I thought was such a funny word — and then she would seem quite terse. I wanted there to be a little bit of “What’s going on with her?” that you couldn’t quite tell. A lot of the film is from the boy’s point of view and part of what Mike’s writing about is that he never understood her, he never was quite able to nail her down, which is interesting about parents. Isn’t there always a part of our parents we don’t quite know?

Another thing Mike is thinking about that I find interesting, as did my husband when he saw the film, is the way he writes about sex. We don’t know a lot about Dorothea’s sex life — we get little hints — but I like that that’s part of the story because if there’s anything we don’t hear about with middle-aged women it’s what their sex life is like.

Jamie tries to explain his mother by saying she grew up during the Depression.
Which I find hilarious. When he says, “They drove sad cars and lived in sad houses,” I find that funny and sweet and melancholy.

Is he right that she was shaped by the Depression?
Absolutely. The real woman, from what Mike has described, was very much frustrated by some of the limitations she had. She wanted to be a pilot. She often worked in very male environments. She didn’t wear makeup, didn’t have any of the trappings of femininity. She smoked. She was wrinkled. She had a fabulous head of gray hair.

You are very de-glamorized in the movie. Was that a relief not to have to be done up every day?
Yes, yes!

Or did it take eight hours for you to look unglamorous?
No, it didn’t. It was absolutely right for the character, and it’s very liberating. Don’t get me wrong, I have vanity and I see myself. I’ve gotten older and those are the wrinkles and that’s what it looks like. But I really want to go with it and play the age that I am. I feel like that’s part of my own little mission. That’s what I always wanted — to be an actress my entire life. And then at the age that I am, okay, if I find the parts then that’s the age I want to portray.

Watch a trailer for ’20th Century Women:’

Everyone knows that it becomes more difficult for women in Hollywood after they’re 40. You’ve had great roles recently, I think partly because you’ve taken chances on independent movies like this and The Kids Are All Right.
The argument for movies like this and The Kids Are All Right is: We are making them for a reasonable amount of money, we don’t have to have a gigantic profit in order to have a success. So why aren’t studios investing small amounts of money in smaller films and banking on a smaller return? And it’s not just women. Believe me, filmmakers in general are frustrated by that. And on top of it, now more than ever, everything has to get smooshed into the end of the year for awards, or it easily gets lost. One from this year is Don Cheadle’s movie, Miles Ahead [which he directed and stars in as Miles Davis]. It’s a really good movie, and he is excellent. It’s completely ignored. Why? Just because it’s not out at the end of the year.

You just shot Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, and you play the 1940s actress Gloria Grahame. In your Yahoo Role Recall [watch the clip below] you said Stephen Frears told you to study Gloria Grahame when you were making The Grifters. That’s a weird full circle.
It is a completely weird full circle. Talk about something different than [20th Century Women.] I could go on about Gloria forever. She led a very scandalous life. She was married to [Rebel Without a Cause director] Nick Ray, they had a son together, she divorced him. Then she had a relationship with Nick Ray’s son from a previous marriage, and they got married and had two children. Then she was on her own and was having a hard time with work. But she was a trouper.

What is the new film about?
When Gloria was my age she met a young Englishman, an actor from Liverpool — who is still alive, Peter Turner — who happens to have been a beautiful man. They had a very serious relationship and he wrote a book about it, a slender, tasteful volume called Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. That’s what the movie is based on. Jamie Bell plays Peter. Vanessa Redgrave is in it – my dream! It was really an interesting job.

Annette Bening Role Recall: Memories of ‘Bugsy,’ ‘American Beauty,’ and More