Warren Beatty had two well known quotes regarding his now wife of 30 years, Annette Bening, when she was casted for his 1991 film, Bugsy.
The first one was directed towards Bening, he said, “I want you to know that I’m not going to come on to you.” The second quote was said to the director, Barry Levinson, after Beatty went out to lunch with Bening for the first time. He said, “I’m going to marry her.”
And that’s exactly what he did barely a year later.
The notorious womanizer, who never wed before Bening, but had flings with people like Cher, Julie Christie, and Diana Ross, was instantly head over heels once he met his Bugsy co-star and future wife.
“It took about ten minutes [to fall in love with her]. Maybe five,” he said. “I was so elated to meet her, and yet at the same time, I began to mourn the passing of a way of life.”
The couple took the world by shock when they decided to marry in 1992. But that shock wasn’t mutual for the Bonnie and Clyde star.
“It didn’t really surprise me,” he told Today in 2016. “I always felt I wasn’t trying to avoid marriage, I was trying to avoid divorce. I had no doubt when I met Annette that it was time to get married.”
Bening seemed to be gravitated towards the Hollywood star, as well. In an interview with People last year, she talked about the first time they met.
“He was incredibly intelligent,” she said of her first impression of Beatty. “I remember thinking ‘Wow, this guy is so smart and so sharp and funny, but more — just articulate.’
“He was very talkative,” she added. “He was very passionate about the movie that he was about to make. He had a lot to say — and he was charming, for sure.”
Throughout their marriage, the couple welcomed four children, Stephen, Benjamin, Isabel, and Ella, to which Beatty told Today, they are “the most important thing that’s ever happened — the best thing that’s ever happened to me — was Annette and having four kids.”
Bening felt the same, in her People interview, she said having a family “was something I always wanted to do, ever since I was a little kid, the minute I could start babysitting, like 12 or 13, I was the neighborhood babysitter. It just always felt natural to me. Nothing comes close.”
Now the children are adults, and Bening admitted to the struggles and sadness of having kids grow up and move out.
“Sometimes it’s hard for me to let go and just remember, ‘oh that’s not my job anymore,’” she said. “I’m so proud of these adult children, who aren’t children, but they’re my kids. They’re all so different and they’re all out there discovering themselves and their voices. We think we’re there to teach them, and of course, what we realize is that they teach us everything.”
Although the Beatty bunch group up with terrifically successful celebrity parents, Warren and Annette did everything they could to keep their kids out of the spotlight.
“It is a burden, I think, to have two parents that are well-known, so I completely respect [my childrens’] privacy,” Warren told Today. “I could go on and on and on and on talking about them, because they’re brilliant and fun. But no, I think you have to give them a break, and they have their privacy.”
Warren and Annette are approaching 31 years of marriage this upcoming March, and there’s nothing to prove otherwise that they are just as happy as they were on their very first lunch date.
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