Page 11 - Real Style January 2018

A TAle of Two AcTresses annette bening stars as gloria grahaMe in filM stars don’t die in liverpool.
By roderick thedorff
GlorIa Grahame wasn’t your typical hollywood movie star. While considered to be talented, with sex appeal, she didn’t t the movie studios’ de nition of what a star was supposed to be. still, she managed to get two academy award nominations, winning one of them for
her role in 1953’s the Bad and the Beautiful. Grahame was perhaps even more famous for her scandalous personal life, which included marrying her former stepson who was 14 years younger than she was. the upcoming motion picture Film stars don’t die In
liverpool chronicles the last
years of her life. It also takes
a look at her romance with
Peter turner, a man 29 years
her junior, who also wrote the
book the movie is based on.
In some way, annette
Bening’s career has been
highly unconventional as well.
she began her career on
stage, and didn’t appear in a
lm until she was 30. she too
has gotten attention from the
academy awards, with four
nominations under her belt,
but has yet to win a statue. In
1992, Bening married Warren
Beatty, a man 21 years her
senior, which opened a lot of eyes. after 25 years and four children with Beatty, they seem to be as strong as ever. still, it is her acting and preparation for her roles that has people talking.
director Paul mcGuigan is just one of many in the industry who seem to be in awe of Bening. “she asks a ton of questions about the character. she does her homework and knows the script probably better than most of us,” he says. even the rst time mcGuigan met with Bening about the part, he knew he “better be on his game” because Bening came armed with books of notes
that helped her understand Grahame better. still, even as prepared as she was, Bening wasn’t so sure people really knew the actress all that well.
“We know something about her relationships,” Bening says. “she was married four times, and she had a lot of tempestuous divorces and custody battles, and all kinds of crazy stuff, but we don’t actually know all that much about her. so I took it from Peter, and Peter adored her. and I think that was new for her, the way that he adored her. I think men had fallen in
love with her, but not in the way that Peter had.”
It wasn’t just Bening’s preparation that caught mcGuigan’s eye either. “she does have a similarity to Gloria Grahame,” he says. “there’s
a physical resemblance, and there’s also a kind of an essence.” those similarities helped him tell the story, he says.
“What I like about the lm as well is showing a woman of that age being sexual, and being vibrant and being vital, and being awed, and I think’s that’s important because it’s usually the other way around
where the old guy gets the younger woman,” mcGuigan says.
“We have ideas about what’s appropriate, or not appropriate for people to do when they fall in love,” Bening says. ”Whether it’s with an older person, a younger person, a person of the same sex, a person of the opposite sex, we all have cultural ideas about what’s okay and not okay, but for a lot of people, when they fall in love, it just happens.”
and with this latest release, it will be hard not to fall in love with Bening and Grahame as well.
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PhOtOS, Left: MOnGreL Media, riGht: wikiPedia