Warren Beatty answers the call
After a 15-year break, he’s back in film with a vengeance
Icon returns as Howard Hughes in ‘Rules Don’t Apply’
An empty nest for many people means easing into retirement. For Warren Beatty, it’s time to go back to work.
After 15 years away from filmmaking to spend more time with his actress-wife, Annette Bening, and their four children, the 79-year-old Hollywood legend writes, directs, produces and stars as eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes in the comedy/drama Rules Don’t Ap
ply (in theaters Wednesday).
“I’ve really taken time to luxuriate in the whole family life, which is something I didn’t do earlier,” he says.
Like the movie’s aspiring actress, Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins), Beatty had a Baptist upbringing in Virginia. And like Marla’s driver, Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), he also had a mind for business.
“When you draw on things from your own life, you try to spread it around, so it doesn’t seem like it’s autobiographical,” says Beatty, whose directorial efforts also include Heaven Can
Wait (1978), Reds (1981), Dick Tracy (1990) and Bulworth (1998). The Oscar-winning icon talks about Rules, taking on real-life characters and getting to the truth.
Q What’s your
secret for doing these all-in movies and not going stir-crazy? A( Pauses) Did I say I haven’t gone crazy? QYou
seem sane enough. A I’m misleading you. (Laughs) Q Had you been kicking around the idea of an old-school Hollywood movie?
A
The first picture I made (Elia Kazan’s 1961 drama
Splendor in the Grass) was a hit, and I had a lot more freedom than other people my age. I’ve never made a lot of movies — I’ve made fewer movies than anybody who’s been around as long as I have. And I’ve been around a long time. (Laughs) I’ll have an idea in the back of my mind, and it takes me a while to actually get around to doing it. QWhat rules apply to playing a real-life person like Hughes? A When you take a person who’s actually lived — and I’ve done it three times before, with Bonnie and Clyde, Bugsy and Reds — you find yourself fictionalizing constantly and, to some extent, a large component of history is fiction. QIs that why you begin the movie with a quote from Hughes? A
(In my approach to the movie) I quoted three people: I quoted Henry Ford, who said, “History is bunk”; I quoted Winston Churchill, who said, “History will be very kind to me because I intend to write it”; and I quoted Napoleon, who said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” I threw them all out and I stuck with one quote from Howard Hughes: “Never check an interesting fact.” Q Which of the quotes do you agree with the most? A They’re
all a little extreme because they’re our great historians. But there’s no way of knowing what actually happened.
I’ve been through 15 books written about me and I’ve read no more than 15 pages of any of those books. Then I put them aside because they’re so full of baloney.
They’re invented to sell, and if you’ve been a Hollywood actor, they try to make it as sexy as possible. QEver thought about writing your own and telling the truth? A Sure. Let me put it this way, nobody else will. (Laughs)