Entertainment

How Warren Beatty fell in love after ‘12,775’ women

Tom and Katie went kaput. Antonio and Melanie split. But some 22 years in, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening are still going strong, upending expectations and defying logic.

Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America

How did one of the greatest womanizers in Hollywood history — someone who once proclaimed that he couldn’t sleep at night unless he’d had sex — manage to settle down and build one of the longest-lasting unions in show business? As Bening kicks off a run Tuesday in the Shakespeare in the Park production of “King Lear,” we take a look.

Beatty is now 77 years old, and even subtracting the time he’s been married to Bening, some estimate he borders on record territory when it comes to conquests. Peter Biskind, author of “Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America,” puts the number at 12,775, which boils down to about one per night from the mid-1950s to 1991. Along the way, he’s been linked to dozens of famous names, including Joan Collins, Madonna and Carly Simon, who is rumored to have written “You’re So Vain” for the actor.

He met the woman who’d become his wife in 1990: Beatty was set to star in the mafia drama “Bugsy” and was in search of a leading lady to play Virginia Hill, gangster Bugsy Siegel’s girlfriend.

Beatty had heard good things about the talented Bening and had tried to meet with her for his film “Dick Tracy,” but the two could never get together. In November 1990, he invited her to lunch at Los Angeles restaurant Santo Pietro. Bening’s agent warned her not to take the meeting because he feared Beatty would hit on her.

“And it turned out he was right,” Beatty later recalled.

Bening and Beatty in 1991’s “Bugsy.”Everett Collection

The two had lunch and went for a short walk. When Beatty returned to his office, he called “Bugsy” director Barry Levinson and said of Bening, “I love her, and I’m going to marry her.”

“Bugsy”Everett Collection

It was love at first sight — at least for Beatty. Bening knew of her future leading man’s reputation as a womanizer. Beatty was all in, even if it meant leaving the single life behind.

“It took about 10 minutes [to fall in love with her]. Maybe five,” he later said. “I was so elated to meet her, and yet at the same time, I began to mourn the passing of a way of life.”

Beatty had lived an exciting, libertine lifestyle that seemed to involve nearly nonstop fun and sex.

“When I was in my 20s and 30s, there were certain things that were irresistible. And then into my 40s and into my 50s, being adolescent never got boring,” he has said. “That fortunately came to a conclusion, not a moment too soon.”

When he met Bening, then 32, Beatty was ready to be domesticated.

Beatty and his leading lady reportedly stayed just friends on the movie until just before it wrapped. That’s when the two had dinner and Beatty invited Bening back to his house for dessert. As the two enjoyed ice cream in his kitchen, Beatty asked if she wanted kids. She said she did, and the two got started right then.

Bening and Beatty at the Oscars in 2011.WireImage

Bening claimed that she was attracted to Beatty because he was “smart and fun and interesting.” After a lifetime of banging starlets, Beatty may have liked Bening for her normalcy. She dressed down and wasn’t interested in LA hot spots. He fell for her “because she doesn’t behave like an actress,” Bening’s mother later said “She’s still herself.”

Bening grew up in Kansas, and her breakthrough role didn’t come until 1990’s “The Grifters,” for which she was nominated for an Oscar.

“Thank God fame didn’t happen to me until I was 30,” Bening said. “By then I had coping mechanisms.”

Life with her was very different from what Beatty had experienced with his previous squeeze, Madonna. The singer, who like most of Beatty’s squeezes was decades younger, dragged her boyfriend to loud clubs.

The few glimpses of Beatty in the 1991 documentary “Madonna: Truth or Dare” are telling. He’s often seen in a corner looking uncomfortable when the camera swings his way.

Bening provided a more traditional life — which, in the end, seems like what the old swordsman wanted. The couple’s first child, Kathlyn, was born in January 1992. Bening and Beatty were married two months later in a small ceremony.

They had three more kids. Kathlyn has come out as gay and transgender and now goes by the name Stephen.

The couple in 1995.Getty Images

Beatty semiretired after 2001’s disastrous “Town & Country.” Bening still works regularly, appearing in 2010’s “The Kids Are All Right” and last year’s “Girl Most Likely.”

The pair will reunite next year in a movie about Howard Hughes that Beatty wrote, directed and stars in. The story reportedly centers on an affair with a young woman Hughes had as an older man. Bening is to play the aviator’s long-suffering wife.

She’s 56 now, and despite Beatty once cracking, “My notion of a wife at 40 is that a man should be able to change her, like a bank note, for two 20s,” the couple is still together. Raise your hand if you saw that coming.

Warren Beatty’s beauties

Before he settled down with Annette Bening, the ladies loooooved Warren Beatty. Here are a few of the over 12,000 he allegedly squired:

1 of 21
Beatty with Natalie Wood in 1961.
Beatty with Natalie Wood in 1961. Getty Images
Diane Sawyer, here in 1978.
Diane Sawyer, here in 1978. Getty Images
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Brigitte Bardot, here in 1960.
Brigitte Bardot, here in 1960. Getty Images
Raquel Welch, here in 1967.
Raquel Welch, here in 1967. Paris Match via Getty Images)
Beatty with Madonna in 1998.
Beatty with Madonna in 1998. Getty Images
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Beatty with Julie Christie in 1971.
Beatty with Julie Christie in 1971. WireImage
Diane von Furstenberg, here in 1972.
Diane von Furstenberg, here in 1972. WireImage
Stephanie Seymour, here in 1998.
Stephanie Seymour, here in 1998. WireImage
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Cher, here in 1966.
Cher, here in 1966. Getty Images
Diana Ross, here in 1970.
Diana Ross, here in 1970. WireImage
Beatty with Jane Fonda in 1978.
Beatty with Jane Fonda in 1978. WireImage
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Bianca Jagger, here in 1976.
Bianca Jagger, here in 1976. Getty Images
Carly Simon in 1971.
Carly Simon in 1971.Getty Images
Beatty with Diane Keaton in 1978.
Beatty with Diane Keaton in 1978. WireImage
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Iman in 1979.
Iman in 1979. Getty Images
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