Why Bening is flying high as a bad girl Liver Bird
ANNETTE BENING stated a well-known fact: ‘Men have been mistreating women, on and off screen, for a very long time.’ The actress, a former governor of the academy of Motion Picture arts and sciences, shook her head and noted that Gloria Grahame, the faded femme fatale she portrays in Film stars don’t die in Liverpool (in one of the year’s best performances), did a string of post-war pictures where, time and again, she was beaten up on screen. Bening observed that if you were the ‘bad girl’ in a movie, as Grahame often was: ‘it was nothing for a man to turn around and slap you, or beat you up. ‘it happened to Gloria in a number of films — but only if she was the bad girl. not if you were the good girl,’ said Bening (left), with a shiver. ‘Gloria wasn’t bad in life. although, i think she was a handful. and she was attracted to men who were complicated.’ Grahame was the girl who couldn’t say ‘ no’ in the film version of oklahoma!. and though she made other silver screen classics such as The Bad and The Beautiful and Human desire, she was, as Bening put it, just below the top rung of actresses of that era. after a while, she had a tough time finding work. ‘she’d had a really rough life — a scandalous, tempestuous life,’ Bening said, when we were discussing what took the heat out of Grahame’s career.
SHE had four children. Four marriages. she married her stepson and had children with him. ‘she continued acting — she was a good actress — but it wasn’t in front of a camera very often.’
When film work dried up in the U.s., Grahame’s agents found her stage work.
‘she was a movie star — but she was a B- movie star. Producers in england thought it would be great to hire the girl who couldn’t say no,’ annette noted.
Which brings us to how Gloria met actor Peter Turner and ended up staying in the spare room of his parents’ home . . . in Liverpool.
Barbara Broccoli, the producer behind the Bond films, knew Grahame and Turner, and often saw them socially. Twenty years ago, she talked to Bening about the love affair between the young actor and the former Hollywood star.
Turner had written a memoir about the couple’s romance. annette said: ‘ He loved her. she was treated well by a really good guy — and that was not usual for her.’
she speculated that Grahame was attracted not just to Turner’s normal life ( after years spent in the madness of the film world), but also to his family in Liverpool.
Two decades after Broccoli first broached the subject of making a film about the couple, the producer held what’s called a ‘ chemistry’ reading with Bening and Jamie Bell at her home in Los angeles.
The two hit it off — though Bell later told me he felt extremely nervous meeting Bening, a four-time oscar nominee — so Hollywood royalty — and married to Warren Beatty.
as much as Film stars don’t die in Liverpool is a love story, it’s also a commentary on how age stalks actresses.
Bening said when she started her career, she wanted ‘ to work my whole life, through the different stages, and not to stay young — because you can’t anyway — but to try and portray the ages that i am’.
she was 30 when she made her first movie.
‘i remember reading that it was over for actresses then at 35!’ she laughed.
HER first major film role was as a sultry con artist in The Grifters, directed by stephen Frears and distributed by Miramax Films... Harvey Weinstein’s company at the time.
‘He never touched me,’ she told me. ‘ i’m glad Harvey’s behaviour has been exposed. i’m glad it’s all out and that the women are being supported and being brave.’
But she said she hoped that ‘some learning about a sense of self, and that no job is worth it’ would come out of the mess, too.
‘i want there to be a point where women are able to say: “sorry, that’s inappropriate — i’m leaving the room.” and mean it,’ said Bening.
‘sometimes it’s intimidating, especially if you need a job and you’re young. But you say no and you don’t go in the room.’
FILM Stars don’t die in Liverpool goes on UK release on november 17.