Henry Warren Beatty[a] (néBeaty; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has been nominated for fourteen Academy Awards – four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, three for Original Screenplay, and one for Adapted Screenplay – winning Best Director for Reds (1981). Beatty is the only person to have been nominated for acting in, directing, writing, and producing the same film, and he did so twice: first for Heaven Can Wait (with Buck Henry as co-director), and again with Reds.[b]
Director and collaborator Arthur Penn described Beatty as "the perfect producer", adding, "He makes everyone demand the best of themselves. Warren stays with a picture through editing, mixing and scoring. He plain works harder than anyone else I have ever seen."[8]
Henry Warren Beaty was born March 30, 1937, in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a teacher from Nova Scotia. His father, Ira Owens Beaty, had studied for a PhD in educational psychology and worked as a teacher and school administrator, in addition to dealing in real estate.[9] Beatty's grandparents were also teachers. The family was Baptist.[10][11] While Warren Beaty was still a child, Ira Beaty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk and then to Arlington and Waverly, then back to Arlington, eventually taking a position at Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in 1945. During the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington.[12] Beatty's older sister is the actress, dancer and writer Shirley MacLaine. His uncle, by marriage, was Canadian politician A. A. MacLeod.
Beatty became interested in movies before his teens, when he often accompanied his sister to theaters. One film that had an important early influence on him was The Philadelphia Story (1940), which he saw when it was re-released in the 1950s. He noticed a strong resemblance between its star, Katharine Hepburn, and his mother, in both appearance and personality, saying that they symbolized "perpetual integrity."[13] Another film that affected him was Love Affair (1939), which starred one of his favorite actors, Charles Boyer.[13] He found it "deeply moving," and recalls that "This is a movie I always wanted to make."[13] He did remake Love Affair in 1994, in which he starred alongside Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn.
Among his favorite TV shows in the 1950s was the Texaco Star Theatre, and he began to mimic one if its regular host comedians, Milton Berle. Beatty learned to do a "superb imitation of Berle and his routine," said a friend, and he often used Berle-type humor at home.[13] His sister Shirley MacLaine's lasting memories of her brother include seeing him reading books by Eugene O'Neill or singing along to Al Jolson records.[13] In Rules Don't Apply (2016), Beatty plays Howard Hughes, who is shown talking about and singing Jolson songs while flying his plane.[14]
MacLaine noted—on what made her brother want to become a filmmaker, sometimes writing, producing, directing and starring in his films: "That's why he's more comfortable behind the camera ...He's in the total-control aspect. He has to have control over everything."[13] Beatty doesn't deny that need; in speaking about his earliest parts, he said "When I acted in films I used to come with suggestions about the script, the lighting, the wardrobe, and people used to say 'Waddya want, to produce the picture as well?' And I used to say that I supposed I did."[15]
Beatty was a star football player at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington. Encouraged to act by the success of his sister, who had recently established herself as a Hollywood star, he decided to work as a stagehand at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. during the summer before his senior year. After graduation, he was reportedly offered ten college football scholarships, but turned them all down to study liberal arts at Northwestern University (1954–55), where he joined the Sigma Chi fraternity. After his first year, he left college to move to New York City, where he studied acting under Stella Adler at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.[16]
Fearing that his acting career would be interrupted by being drafted, Beatty used a well-thought-out scheme to resolve the issue of military service without ever serving on active duty. He enlisted in the California Air National Guard on February 11, 1960 under his original name Henry W. Beaty. On January 1, 1961, he was given a dishonorable discharge from the Air National Guard and the United States Air Force Reserve. This made him ineligible for the draft and any military service.[citation needed]
Author Peter Biskind points out that Kazan "was the first in a string of major directors Beatty sought out, mentors or father figures from whom he wanted to learn."[19] Beatty, years later during a Kennedy Center tribute to Kazan, told the audience that Kazan "had given him the most important break in his career."[19]:23 Biskind adds that they "were wildly dissimilar—mentor vs. protege, director vs. actor, immigrant outsider vs. native son. Kazan was armed with the confidence born of age and success, while Beatty was virtually aflame with the arrogance of youth."[19] Kazan recalls his impressions of Beatty:
Warren—it was obvious the first time I saw him—wanted it all and wanted it his way. Why not? He had the energy, a very keen intelligence, and more chutzpah than any Jew I've ever known. Even more than me. Bright as they come, intrepid, and with that thing all women secretly respect: complete confidence in his sexual powers, confidence so great that he never had to advertise himself, even by hints.[20]
Mr. Beatty's career has had all the hallmarks of the conventional Hollywood golden boy. Ingratiating good looks, disarming youthfulness, a delight in the social life and no apparently strong feelings about his craft. This image has now been strikingly shattered with his emergence as a vividly individual actor and as a highly imaginative producer in the gangster ballad, Bonnie and Clyde... At 28 [sic], the image of Warren Beatty, fun-loving playboy, is dead. Warren Beatty, a man of the cinema, is born.
Gene Hackman was chosen because Beatty had acted with him in Lilith in 1964 and felt he was a "great" actor.[22] Upon completion of the film, he credited Hackman with giving the "most authentic performance in the movie, so textured and so moving," recalls Dunaway.[22] He was impressed with Gene Wilder after seeing him in a play and didn't even need him to audition, in what became Wilder's screen debut. And Beatty had already known Pollard: "Michael J. Pollard was one of my oldest friends," Beatty said. "I'd known him forever; I met him the day I got my first television show. We did a play together on Broadway."[22]
Bonnie and Clyde went on to be a critical and commercial success, despite the early misgivings by studio head Jack Warner, who put up the production money. Before filming began, Warner had asked an associate, "What does Warren Beatty think he's doing? How did he ever get us into this thing? This gangster stuff went out with Cagney."[22] The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor, and seven Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor.[18]
After Bonnie and Clyde, Beatty acted with Elizabeth Taylor in The Only Game in Town (1970), directed by George Stevens; McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), directed by Robert Altman; Dollars (1971), directed by Richard Brooks; The Parallax View (1974), directed by Alan Pakula; and The Fortune (1975), directed by Mike Nichols. Beatty produced, co-wrote and acted in Shampoo (1975), directed by Hal Ashby, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay, as well as five Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture and Best Actor. In 1978, Beatty directed, produced, wrote and acted in Heaven Can Wait (1978) (sharing co-directing credit with Buck Henry). The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Adapted Screenplay. It also won three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture and Best Actor.
A film [Reds] of this scope and size demands incredible work from the director, and when you consider that Beatty also served as producer, writer and star, it's hard to believe so much work could come from one man. As a film, it's a marvelous view of America in the 1912-19 era, and Beatty brought some superior performances from a large cast.
Beatty's next film was Reds (1981), a historical epic about American Communist journalist John Reed who observed the Russian October Revolution – a project Beatty had begun researching and filming for as far back as 1970. It was a critical and commercial success, despite being an American film about an American Communist made and released at the height of the Cold War. It received 12 Academy Award nominations – including four for Beatty (for Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Original Screenplay), winning three; Beatty won for Best Director, Maureen Stapleton won for Best Supporting Actress (playing anarchist Emma Goldman), and Vittorio Storaro won for Best Cinematography.[24] The film received seven Golden Globe nominations, including Best Motion Picture, Director, Actor and Screenplay. Beatty won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director.
Following Reds, Beatty did not appear in a film for five years until 1987's Ishtar, written and directed by Elaine May.[25] Following severe criticism in press reviews by the new British studio chief David Puttnam just prior to its release, the film received mixed reviews and was unimpressive commercially.[26] Puttnam attacked several other over-budget U.S. films greenlighted by his predecessor and was fired shortly thereafter.[27]
In 1991, he produced and starred as the real-life gangster Bugsy Siegel in the critically and commercially acclaimed Bugsy, directed by Barry Levinson, which was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor; it later won two of the awards for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.[32] The film also received eight Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Motion Picture and Best Actor, winning for Best Motion Picture. Beatty's next film, Love Affair (1994), directed by Glenn Gordon Caron, received mixed reviews and was unimpressive commercially.[33]
Following the poor box office performance of Town & Country (2001), in which Beatty starred, he did not appear in or direct another film for 15 years.
In May 2005, Beatty sued Tribune Media, claiming he still maintained the rights to Dick Tracy.[36] On March 25, 2011, U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson ruled in Beatty's favor.[37]
Who else is better equipped to understand the symbiosis between show business and politics and to assert that when a certain degree of wealth and power have been achieved, the ordinary rules of human behavior can be flouted?... Fools and idiots abound, but demonic, systemic evil does not. Mr. Beatty obviously loves Hollywood, which has been good to him.
In 2010, Beatty directed and reprised his role as Dick Tracy in a 30-minute comedy film titled Dick Tracy Special, which premiered on TCM. The short metafiction film stars Dick Tracy and film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, the latter of whom discusses the history and creation of Tracy. Tracy talks about how he admired Ralph Byrd and Morgan Conway who portrayed him in several films, but says he didn't care much for Beatty's portrayal of him or his film.[39] At CinemaCon In April 2016, Beatty said he intends to make a Dick Tracy sequel.[40]
Rules Don't Apply (2016), is a fictionalized true-life romantic comedy about Howard Hughes, set in 1958 Hollywood and Las Vegas.[41] It stars Beatty, who wrote, co-produced and directed the film. It co-stars Alden Ehrenreich and Lily Collins, with supporting actors including Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Candice Bergen, Ed Harris and Martin Sheen. Some have said that Beatty's film is 40 years in the making.[42] In the mid-1970s, Beatty signed a contract with Warner Bros. to star in, produce, write, and possibly direct a film about Howard Hughes.[43] The project was put on hold when Beatty began Heaven Can Wait. Initially, Beatty planned to film the life story of John Reed and Hughes back-to-back, but as he was getting deeper into the project, he eventually focused primarily on the Reed film Reds. In June 2011, it was reported that Beatty would produce, write, direct and star in a film about Hughes, focusing on an affair he had with a younger woman in the final years of his life.[44] During this period, Beatty interviewed actors to star in his ensemble cast. He met with Andrew Garfield, Alec Baldwin, Owen Wilson, Justin Timberlake, Shia LaBeouf, Jack Nicholson, Evan Rachel Wood, Rooney Mara, and Felicity Jones.[45] It was released on November 23, 2016, and was Beatty's first film in 15 years.[46][c] Rotten Tomatoes' "Top Critics" gave the film a 63% "Fresh" rating,[47] with one review calling it "hugely entertaining."[48] Another review said that "the wait was worth it."[49]
The film was also a commercial disappointment.[50]
In 2017, Beatty reunited with his Bonnie and Clyde co-star Faye Dunaway at the 89th Academy Awards, in celebration of the film's 50th anniversary. After being introduced by Jimmy Kimmel, they received a standing ovation as they walked out onto the stage to present the Best Picture Award. They had the wrong envelope, leading Dunaway to incorrectly announce La La Land as Best Picture, instead of the actual winner, Moonlight.[51][52] This became a social media sensation, trending all over the world.[53] In 2018, Beatty and Dunaway returned to present Best Picture at the 90th Academy Awards, earning a standing ovation upon their entrance, making jokes about the previous year's flub. Without incident, Beatty announced The Shape of Water as the winner.[54]
The National Association of Theatre Owners awarded him with the Star of the Year Award in 1975, and in 1978 the Director of the Year Award and the Producer of the Year Award. He received the Alan J. Pakula Memorial Award from the National Board of Review in 1998.[60] He received the Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002 from the San Francisco International Film Festival.[61] He has received the Board of Governors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers,[62] the Distinguished Director Award from the Costume Designers Guild,[63] the Life Achievement Award from the Publicists Guild,[64] and the Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery Award from the Art Directors Guild.[65] In 2004, he received the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C.,[66] and the Milestone Award from the Producers Guild of America.[67] He was honored with the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 2008.[68] In March 2013, he was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.[69] In 2016, he was honored by the Museum of the Moving Image [70] and received the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.[71]
In 1959, Beatty began dating actress Joan Collins. They were engaged in the early 1960s, but his infidelity led to their split.[77] Collins revealed in her 1978 autobiography that she became pregnant by Beatty but had an abortion.[78]
Beatty has been married to actress Annette Bening since 1992. They have four children: two daughters and two sons.
Prior to marrying Bening, Beatty was well known for his womanizing and high-profile romantic relationships that received generous media coverage.[79] Singer-songwriter Carly Simon also dated Beatty, and confirmed in November 2015 that she wrote a verse in her hit song "You're So Vain" about him.[80]
Beatty is a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party. In 1972, Beatty was part of the "inner circle" of Senator George McGovern's presidential campaign. He traveled extensively and was instrumental in organizing fundraising.[81] Despite differences in politics, Beatty was also a friend of Republican Senator John McCain, with whom he agreed on the need for campaign finance reform. He was one of the pallbearers chosen by McCain himself at the senator's funeral in 2018.[82]
Untitled Dick Tracy Sequel – Warren Beatty is currently developing this project as of 2016. He has been talking about doing a sequel ever since the original was released in 1990.[83][84]
Ocean of Storms – Beatty was set to produce and star in this aging astronaut love story. Annette Bening was set to co-star. The script was written by Tony Bill & Ben Young Mason with revisions by Wesley Strick, Robert Towne, Lawrence Wright, Stephen Harrigan and Aaron Sorkin. Martin Scorsese was at one point attached to direct. The project was in development from 1989 until around 2000.[85]
^Beatty changed the original spelling Beaty, pronounced /ˈbeɪti/BAY-tee,[1][2][3] in 1957. Both Warren Beatty and his sister, Shirley MacLaine, have said they consider only this pronunciation correct, and Warren was fond of saying the name should rhyme with "weighty", not "Wheaties".[4][5] But the pronunciation /ˈbiːti/BEE-tee is so common that it is also or exclusively recorded in some reliable reference works.[6][7]
^Orson Welles was nominated for acting in, directing, and writing Citizen Kane. Though the film was also nominated for Best Picture and Welles was its producer, that award was not given to individual producers until 1951.
Stephen J. Ross, "Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics", Oxford Press, New York, 2011. ISBN978-0-19-518172-2
Peter Swirski, "1990s That Dirty Word, Socialism: Warren Beatty's Bulworth." Ars Americana Ars Politica. Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010. ISBN978-0-7735-3766-8
David Thomson, "Warren Beatty: A Life and Story", Secker and Warburg, London, 1987. ISBN0-436-52015-X
David Thomson, "Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes", Doubleday and Co., Inc., New York, 1987. ISBN0-385-18707-6
Peter Biskind, "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-drugs-and-rock-'n'-roll Generation Saved Hollywood", Simon & Schuster, Inc. New York, 1998. ISBN0-684-80996-6
Alfredo James Pacino, known professionally as Al Pacino, is an American actor and filmmaker who has had a career spanning more than five decades. He has received numerous accolades and honors both competitive and honorary, among them an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, four Golden Globe Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the National Medal of Arts. He is one of few performers to have won a competitive Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony Award for acting, dubbed the "Triple Crown of Acting".
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor and filmmaker. Hoffman has been called one of the greatest actors of all time. He is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters. He is the recipient of numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards
(including the Cecil B. DeMille Award), four BAFTAs, three Drama Desk Awards and, two Emmy Awards. Hoffman received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999 and the Kennedy Center Honors Award in 2012.
Robert Towne
Robert Towne is an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He was part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays ever written. He later said it was inspired by a chapter in Carey McWilliams's Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) and a West magazine article on Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes (1990); the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail (1973) and Shampoo (1975); and the first two Mission: Impossible films.
Faye Dunaway
Dorothy Faye Dunaway is an American actress. She has won an Academy Award, three Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and an Emmy, and was the first recipient of a Leopard Club Award that honors film professionals whose work has left a mark on the collective imagination. In 2011, the government of France made her an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Bugsy
Bugsy is a 1991 American biographical crime drama film directed by Barry Levinson which tells the story of mobster Bugsy Siegel and his relationship with Virginia Hill. It stars Warren Beatty as Siegel and Annette Bening as Hill, as well as Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliott Gould, and Joe Mantegna. The screenplay was written by James Toback from research material by Dean Jennings' 1967 book We Only Kill Each Other.
Golden Globe Awards
The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign.
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film, television, and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist, and author. An Academy Award winner, MacLaine received the 40th AFI Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2012, and received the Kennedy Center Honors for her lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in 2013. She is known for her New Age beliefs, and has an interest in spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a series of autobiographical works that describe these beliefs, document her world travels, and describe her Hollywood career.
Richard Farnsworth
Richard William Farnsworth was an American actor and stuntman. He is best known for his performances in The Grey Fox (1982), for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination, Anne of Green Gables (1985), Misery (1990), and The Straight Story (1999), for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Ed Harris
Edward Allen Harris is an American actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. His performances in Apollo 13 (1995), The Truman Show (1998), Pollock (2000) and The Hours (2002) earned him critical acclaim in addition to Academy Award nominations. Harris has appeared in several leading and supporting roles, such as in The Right Stuff (1983), The Abyss (1989), State of Grace (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Nixon (1995), The Rock (1996), Stepmom (1998), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Enemy at the Gates (2001), A History of Violence (2005), Gone Baby Gone (2007), Snowpiercer (2013), and Mother! (2017). In addition to directing Pollock, Harris also directed the western Appaloosa (2008).
Annette Bening
Annette Carol Bening is an American actress. She began her career on stage with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival company in 1980, and played Lady Macbeth in 1984 at the American Conservatory Theatre. She was nominated for the 1987 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her Broadway debut in Coastal Disturbances and for the 2019 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for All My Sons. She is a four-time Academy Award nominee for the films: The Grifters (1990), American Beauty (1999), Being Julia (2004), and The Kids Are All Right (2010). In 2006, she received a film star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Dick Tracy (1990 film)
Dick Tracy is a 1990 American action comedy film based on the 1930s comic strip character of the same name created by Chester Gould. Warren Beatty produced, directed, and starred in the film, whose supporting roles include Al Pacino, Madonna, Glenne Headly, and Charlie Korsmo. Dick Tracy depicts the detective's romantic relationships with Breathless Mahoney and Tess Trueheart, as well as his conflicts with crime boss Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice and his henchmen. Tracy also begins fostering a young street urchin named Kid.
Bo Goldman
Robert Goldman professionally known as Bo Goldman, is an American writer, Broadway playwright and screenwriter. To date, he has received two Academy Awards out of three nominations.
He and his wife were married until her death in December 2017
Peter Chelsom
Peter Chelsom is a British film director, writer, and actor. He has directed such films as Hector and the Search for Happiness, Serendipity, and Shall We Dance?Peter Chelsom is a member of the British Academy, the American Academy, The Directors Guild of America, and The Writers Guild of America.
Rules Don't Apply
Rules Don't Apply is a 2016 American romantic comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by Warren Beatty. The ensemble cast features Beatty, in his first screen acting role in 15 years, Annette Bening, Matthew Broderick, Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich. Set in 1958 Hollywood, the film follows the romantic relationship between a young actress and her driver, which is forbidden by their employer, Howard Hughes.
List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have presented their annual Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, since 1929. The Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress have been presented since the 1st ceremony, while the awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress have been presented since the 9th ceremony. Of the 928 Academy Award nominees in an acting category, a total of 343 have received two or more acting nominations. Meryl Streep is the most nominated performer in the acting categories, with 21 nominations between 1979 and 2018.
89th Academy Awards
The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2016, and took place on February 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, at 5:30 p.m. PST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd and directed by Glenn Weiss. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel hosted the ceremony for the first time.
Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio
Director-actor duo Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have frequently collaborated, making five feature films and one short film since 2002. The pair's films explore a variety of genres, including crime, thriller, biopic and comedy. Several have been listed on many critics' year-end top ten and best-of-decade lists.
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