Beatty Won't Run for Prez; Bening Takes Film Time-out

January 4, 2000

Want to cast your ballot for Warren Beatty? Not this presidential election. The actor has hinted for months he might make a run for the Oval Office but refused to be pinned down on any specifics. Now the politically minded actor says he's out of the running because he's afraid his candidacy would "harm" the causes — such as campaign finance reform — he's been championing.

"Look, Mr. Movie Star was up here and tried to do something with these issues, and look how unpopular they are," he tells Vanity Fair magazine, explaining why he finally decided not to make a run for the White House either as a Democrat or as an independent.

But in the interview with Vanity Fair contributing editor Peter Biskind, Beatty adds, "I feel good about speaking up. I wouldn't feel good if I hadn't. It seems to me that the effect has been positive, that I've not yet made too big a fool of myself — at least I don't think I have."

The actor certainly got a lot of ink over speculation that he'd run, but he, just like a politician, left the door open for a future try at public office. "Can I be more effective at another time?" he ponders to Biskind, "Whether that is in a year or two years, who knows?"

Wife Annette Bening is also stepping away from the limelight, for now. The actress, who's nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as a manic working mom in American Beauty, is expecting the couple's fourth child and tells More magazine she wants to take some much-needed maternity leave. In the magazine's February issue, she says of her pregnancy, "I feel exhilarated. Kind of liberated."

After finishing American Beauty, she headed immediately to Los Angeles for a month-long theater stint in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. She then filmed the Mike Nichols-directed movie What Planet Are You From?, which is due out this spring.

"I was just overacted," Bening says. "If I had to come up with one more emotional moment, I was going to kill myself."

Bening, who broke through in a 1991 role opposite her future husband in Bugsy, says she is glad fame came later in life. "I had never considered myself glamorous," she says. "Thank God it didn't happen to me until I was 30. By then I had some coping mechanisms."

If the buzz is right and Bening is nominated for an Oscar for her American Beauty performance, she'll be facing a big dilemma: The Academy Awards will be given out March 26, which is within days of her due date. Perhaps the baby could be named Oscar?

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