Warren Beatty and Annette Bening Talk Their 24-Year Marriage, Plus He Opens Up About His Bachelor Days

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Sam Jones for AARP The Magazine

It’s no secret that Warren Beatty was quite the ladies man before his 1992 marriage to Annette Bening. But in a new interview withAARP The Magazine, Beatty,79, opened up about his decision to finally settle down.

“I waited a long time to be married,” he told the mag. “When you don’t get married until you’re 54…well, as Arthur Miller said, ‘it comes with the territory.’’

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The pair met on the set of the movie Bugsy, but Beatty noted that there was no on-set romance between them.

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“During the making of the movie, there was no suggestion as to a future relationship,” he noted. “I mean, there was in my head, but otherwise, no.”

Beatty told Bening, “You don’t have to worry about me.” And she said, “Well, I didn’t ask.”

Bening also got candid about her husband, saying, “There’s always a part of what he’s doing that’s private, but we talk a lot about everything. Some people pay lip service to listening to others and they’re really not listening. He does. He loves actors, and while he’s shooting he’s always interested in what people are saying. He’s a terrific audience.”

Now Beatty is preparing to return to the screen in a film he both wrote and directed, Rules Don’t Apply, which also stars Bening.

“I was like, ‘I am ready to kill you. Just make the movie, please, please, please,’” Bening joked of having Beatty home for the past six years. “But like other people at his level of talent, he does it when he’s ready. And no one’s saying anything made a difference, including me.”

Sam Jones for AARP The Magazine

Before his life as a committed husband and father a 2010 biography claimed the Oscar winner had bedded 12,775 women, a number which Beatty contests.

“Think about it, sleeping with 12,775 people,” he told the mag. “That would mean not just that there were multiple people a day, but that there was no repetition.”


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And even if his number wasn’t quite that high, the interviewer pointed out of his many conquests, few have publicly bashed him (unless you count that whole “You’re So Vain” debate).

”Look, I never misled anyone,” he said of his past partners. “And…and I’m a nice guy.”

Rules Don’t Apply hits theaters on Nov. 23 and also stars Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, and Lily Collins.

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