So, Why DID Annette Never Win?
A few months ago, during the throes of Oscar season, I wrote an article concerning Our Number One Lady: “So, Why DID Glenn Never Win?”. Now, with “Nyad” about to surface on Netflix, here’s a companion piece about Our Number Two.
Not that there’s anything to it.
If Annette was European, her trophy cabinet would heave! America has never known what to do with homegrown talents of a certain age, and La Bening is the closest they’ve produced to a Kristin Scott Thomas, an Isabelle Huppert or a Carmen Maura. I often think she’s fundamentally too modern to succeed in the period pieces that might otherwise carry her across the line – with the exception of Being Julia. Annette has four nominations and it’s an underperformance. Moreover, she was the runner-up on each occasion.
And don’t give me any of your guff. She was! You’re brainwashed by the Snooty Twitter Gays. They rewrite history to an extent that would make Joseph Goebbels cringe. (Did you know that Holly Hunter, who earned thirteen precursor awards for The Piano, won Best Actress in a “shock upset” over the other A.B., Angela Bassett?) The STGs hold Our Number Two Lady in slightly higher regard than they do Our Number One, but only just. A polite way of saying: that tragic “Women in Film” T-shirt company does an Annette Bening number. Popular in 3XL!
And why shouldn’t they? She’s a goddess.
Forgive me if this post is written in the gushy tone of F. Murray Abraham who considered Geraldine Page “the greatest actress in the English language”. But look Annette Bening up in the dictionary, and you’ll find the word “class”. Within three years of her debut as a thirty-ish ingénue, she starred opposite Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford and future husband Warren Beatty. Worked with Miloš Forman, Stephen Frears and Mike Nichols. Her meteoric rise to fame cast her as Catwoman in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, until pregnancy necessitated her replacement. Combining extensive theatre training with a stoic Middle American bearing, she clinched her first career nomination for 1990’s The Grifters. In the same year’s Postcards from the Edge, she steals the picture from under Meryl Streep’s nose in a memorable cameo. And in 1994’s Love Affair, the Beattys’ answer to a Liz and Dick movie, there’s a touching moment wherein Katharine Hepburn passes the mantle of “Great American Film Actress”.
“I was desperate to please her,” Bening confessed “she’s great. And she’s tough. No nonsense. She’s not somebody who sits around and has a chat with you.” One suspects those words hold equally for her! Although I imagine she’s warmly approachable: at home discussing Goethe, as well as Rodgers and Hammerstein. A political strategist, running the numbers on one of her husband’s stillborn campaigns, remarked: “Many times we said Annette would be a better candidate because she was more decisive, more outspoken, more willing to rock the boat and be unpopular”.
I dare say her losses are all down to happenstance – nothing more than unfortunately-timed release dates or, in the case of American Beauty, category confusion. (You must admit: Annette is about the only thing from that film that has aged remotely well.) As Carolyn Burnham, she inaugurated the Academy’s infatuation with put-upon wives that, like Marcia Gay Harden or Jennifer Connelly, triumphed in Supporting; but came up short for Oscar Number One. An indignity exacerbated by her loss to Hilary Rodham Swank. Not once, but twice!
In 2000, a heavily pregnant Annette watched Sam Mendes and Kevin Spacey receive their Oscars for the American Beauty juggernaut, while she glumly sat on the sidelines. (Boys Don’t Cry, notwithstanding a nod for Chloë Sevigny, was ignored outside its central performance; as Being Julia was, five years later.) In 2005, Hilary Swank wasn’t condemned to Annette’s fate when she, Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman benefited from a Million Dollar Baby blitz. Annette’s fourth loss (for The Kids Are All Right) to Black Swan’s Natalie Portman is similarly questionable. Madam Portman courted controversy for calling her Oscar a “false idol”; even claiming to have lost the statue. I’m looking forward to her memoir, co-authored with Sally Rooney, How to Be Grateful.
Bening’s lack of a fifth nomination since 2010 perplexes. Like sister-in-law Shirley MacLaine, she’s done her best work post-fifty. It’s also a shameful way of treating a former Academy governor; someone who is clearly beloved by young actors; and who has been at the forefront of charitable endeavours during the pandemic and strikes. I’m not holding my hopes out for Nyad, a sort of Esther Williams’s Hillbilly Elegy. Within seconds of warm reviews appearing online, Twitter cast a pall on the real woman’s achievements and unflattering comments Diana Nyad made about trans athletes. As Samuel Beckett’s line about the first four hours of a diet goes: nothing arouses more false hopes than an Annette Bening-starrer. The best we can hope for is to Andrea Riseborough-her in – a ‘Welcome Back’ Albert Nobbs nod.
As though Annette’s ever been away…
UPDATE (11/11/23)