Biography: One of the most fascinating characters in Hollywood history, Warren Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia on March 30, 1937. His mother, Kathlyn, had been a drama teacher but gave it up to settle down in Virginia and raise a family, although it was never in doubt that Beatty and his sister, the actress and dancer Shirley MacLaine, would themselves be raised to pursue stardom - e ... show all One of the most fascinating characters in Hollywood history, Warren Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia on March 30, 1937. His mother, Kathlyn, had been a drama teacher but gave it up to settle down in Virginia and raise a family, although it was never in doubt that Beatty and his sister, the actress and dancer Shirley MacLaine, would themselves be raised to pursue stardom - each was urged to be successful and achieve from a very early age.
Beatty attended high school in Arlington, Virginia and attended Northwestern University, but, not to be outdone by his rising-star big sister, soon dropped out to study acting under the legendary Stella Adler. He then got his first screen role, in the TV sitcom "Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The" (1959)", a role he found "ridiculous" and rapidly abandoned to work instead on the Broadway stage, the highlight of which was his Tony-nominated performance in "A Loss of Roses."
Beatty's first major film role came in the successful drama "Splendor in the Grass (1961)", as the confused Bud. Critics refused to take the ambitious Beatty seriously, and he strove to turn this around with his arty crime drama "Mickey One (1965)", directed by Arthur Penn, which did get favorable notices but did not find an audience. Next he starred in a lightweight comedy, "Promise Her Anything (1965)", along with the lovely Leslie Caron, and the handsome, charismatic Beatty, already an aspiring Lothario, had an affair with his married co-star which was cited in Caron's divorce proceedings.
Beatty teamed up again with Penn for the movie that would elevate his status in Hollywood, the classic "Bonnie and Clyde (1967)", in which he and co-star Faye Dunaway played the quirky outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. The movie's powerful performances, strong direction and controversially graphic violence made it a huge hit, and Beatty finally found himself taken seriously.
Over the next period in his career, spanning well over a decade, Beatty starred in, produced and occasionally directed some of the most important films in Hollywood, some critically praised, such as "McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)", others prescient social commentaries, such as "Shampoo (1975)" (which itself became an important event in popular culture), others wonderful takes on Hollywood classics, such as "Heaven Can Wait (1978)". He capped this all off with his hugely-ambitious recounting of the American radical journalist John Reed's experiences in Bolshevik Russia, "Reds (1981)", for which Beatty, already nominated for Oscars several times, finally won for Best Director. Beatty was an intrinsic part of the renaissance of Hollywood in the 1970s, when films were being made every year that were important as well as successful.
Beatty's remarkable career stalled in the 1980s. In fact, he was absent from the screen for most of that decade, and when his next film after "Reds" finally came, it was the hugely ambitious and legendarily disastrous "Ishtar (1987)", one of the biggest film catastrophes of the decade. Beatty's next movie, "Dick Tracy (1990)" was colorful and a box office success, but was greeted with tepid reviews. Following this came "Bugsy (1991)", a biopic of the life of gangster and Las Vegas visionary Bugsy Siegel, which was another box office failure. Beatty married his "Bugsy" co-star, Annette Bening, and produced and, with her, starred in another expensive disaster, "Love Affair (1994)". Beatty revisited his "Ishtar" nadir with his expensive 2001 comedy "Town & Country (2001)", which was both a box office and a critical disaster.
Fortunately, in the midst of all this Beatty's creative best resurfaced in 1998 with his "Bulworth (1998)", an arch political satire about a liberal California senator forced to resort to the right-wing politics of the day to retain his seat. Disillusioned, he puts out a contract on his own life and decides to graphically show the ugliness that has become politics to the public while he waits to die, but his fatal plan is complicated when he falls for a beautiful young woman from South-Central LA (Halle Berry). "Bulworth" is a reminder that Beatty is still capable of making movies that are remarkable, entertaining and successful.
Beatty is almost as famous for his love life as he is for his movie-making, having been connected with a galaxy of beautiful starlets, a who's who list reported to include Joan Collins , Leslie Caron, Madonna , Julie Christie , Liv Ullmann, Brigitte Bardot, Carly Simon (who is rumored to have written "You're so Vain" about him), Elle Macpherson, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Candice Bergen, Cher , and Britt Ekland. Notorious for his alleged love `em and leave `em treatment of many of these women, an aging Beatty had the tables turned on him by the sultry diva, supermodel Stephanie Seymour, who unceremoniously dropped Beatty to pursue W. Axl Rose of rock band Guns 'n Roses. Soon after that, Beatty settled down with Bening. The couple have four children. hide |
