Annette Bening

Annette Carol Bening (born May 29, 1958) is an American actress. She began her career on the stage and was nominated for the 1987 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Coastal Disturbances. A four-time Academy Award-nominee for her roles in the films The Grifters (1990), American Beauty (1999), Being Julia (2004) and The Kids Are All Right (2010), she won a BAFTA Award for American Beauty and Golden Globe Awards for Being Julia and The Kids Are All Right. Her other film roles include Valmont (1989), Bugsy (1991), The American President (1995), The Siege (1998), Open Range (2003), and Running with Scissors (2006).

In 2006, she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance as Jean Harris in Mrs. Harris. That same year, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Early life

Bening was born in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of Shirley Katherine (née Ashley; b. 1929) and Arnett Grant Bening. Her mother was a church singer and soloist, and her father was a sales training consultant and insurance salesman. Her parents, natives of Iowa, were practicing Episcopalians and conservative Republicans. She is of mostly German and English descent. Bening has one sister, Jane, and two brothers, Bradley and Byron. The family moved to Wichita, Kansas in 1959, where she spent her early childhood. In 1965, her father took a job with a company in San Diego, California, and they moved there. She began acting in junior high school, playing the lead in The Sound of Music. She graduated in 1975 from Patrick Henry High School, where she studied drama. She then spent a year working as a cook on a charter boat taking fishing parties out on the Pacific Ocean, and scuba diving for recreation. Bening attended San Diego Mesa College, then completed an academic degree in theatre arts at San Francisco State University.