Hidden in the winding canyon roads high above Los Angeles is a nondescript shopping center where the rich and famous shop for groceries, pick up Starbucks coffee and schmooze over bagels in a popular deli.
Although the area is somewhat rural, the cars in the parking lot represent the spectrum of sophisticated luxury automobiles from Europe. Everybody is somebody in this neighborhood, and nobody is more somebody than Annette Bening.
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All heads turn in her direction as the Oscar-nominated actress makes her way to a rear booth in a favorite breakfast spot. In less than a minute, an older couple who claim to be friends of Bening’s husband, Warren Beatty, approach the booth and introduce themselves. A few minutes later, a fawning but opportunistic young woman pitches the actress on a book she wants to write about women who are “centered.”
These are busy times for the 46-year-old actress, who has been nominated in the best actress category for her portrayal of a flamboyant British actress facing midlife in the 1930s drama “Being Julia.” It is her third Oscar nomination, the other two coming by way of “The Grifters” and “American Beauty.”
Please describe the morning of a glamorous Oscar-nominated movie star.
It started today at about 5:30 a.m., when my youngest daughter crawled into bed. That was sort of a wake-up call because I couldn’t fall back asleep. So I fed the dog. Then I fed the kids, got them dressed and drove them to school.
How glamorous. Didn’t you do anything remotely related to movie stardom this morning?
I talked with some people about the dress.
OK, now we’re talking. What about the dress?
The dress is paramount in my life right now. All my girlfriends are voting on which dress I should wear to the Oscars. My husband has a vote. My kids have a vote. Is that the kind of glamor stuff you were looking for?
This is your third nomination. How were your experiences at the Oscars ceremony the first two times?
The first time, I had only done a couple of movies, so it never occurred to me that I’d win. So I sat back and had a lot of fun. But that experience was made even better when the five nominees in my category got together minutes before the show started and agreed that we’d meet for dinner the next week and whoever won would pay. Whoopi Goldberg won (“Ghost”). A few days later, I got a bouquet of flowers from Whoopi with a card that said to meet at a certain restaurant at a certain time.
The second Oscar night was the famous pregnancy scare, wasn’t it?
There was never any real danger of me delivering that night. I was still a couple of weeks away from my due date. But the experience of being pregnant is so all-consuming that no matter what’s going on, that’s all you can think about. But “American Beauty” was getting a lot of awards, my husband got a very prestigious award that night, and it was starting to get a bit overwhelming. Finally, at the Governor’s Ball, with 50 cameras in my face and the baby moving around constantly from the adrenaline flowing in my system, I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t feel well, so as discreetly as I could, I walked out.
Do you think you might win this time?
I just don’t know.