Annette Bening was born in Topeka, Kansas on May 29th, 1958. She was the youngest of four siblings and when she was still a child the Bening family moved to San Diego. She enrolled at a local college when she got a job as a dancer in "The Green Show," presented outside San Diego's famed Old Globe Theatre. This led to a walk-on in a Shakespeare production and two plays with the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

After Graduating from San Francisco State University, she was accepted by the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, where she trained before joining the acting company. Before moving to New York to pursue her career she appeared in summer Shakespeare festivals and regional productions.

In New York she appeared in Coastal Disturbances, first at the Second Stage and then on Broadway. Her performance earned her a the Clarence Derwent Award for most outstanding debut performance of the season and a Tony nomination.

Annette has since gone on to yield a successful film career. Although it may have had a rocky start with "The Great Outdoors," she was soon appearing in quality material like "Postcards from the Edge," "Love Affair," "The American President," and "Grifters," for which she garnered an Oscar nomination.

It was during the making of 1991's "Bugsy" that she first met Warren Beatty. She was initially seen as his latest conquest, but as time would tell the relationship was far more than that. In fact it would appear that it was Beatty who had been conquered. The couple married and have three children, Kathlyn, Benjamine, Isabel and they are awaiting the arrival of their fourth child very soon.

Most recently Bening has appeared in the box office hit, "American Beauty," a savage, black comedy indictment of the dysfunction behind the closed doors of tidy suburbia. "The connection between one's life and the parts one plays are inevitable. I think that I try to keep those sort of separate" says Bening. While this may have been easy to do on some of her other projects, Bening found that while filming "American Beauty" she was reminded of her youth. She recalled babysitting for families that were not far off from the Burnham family portrayed in the film. Annette received an Oscar nomination for her outstanding performance in "American Beauty."

Currently, Annette is working on the Mike Nichols film "What Planet Are You From?" The film stars co-writer Gary Shandling who is an alien sent to earth to breed with a human woman.