It is estimated that all the female stars of the mecca of cinema between the 60s and 90s dated him, from Jane Fonda and Joan Collins to Madonna. The thirty years of his relationship with Annette Bening. The phrases that arose about his fame as a lover. And his undeniable artistic talent
A non-exhaustive list, with the first names that come to mind: Jane Fonda, Joan Collins, Julie Christie, Natalie Wood, Goldie Hawn, Babra Streissand, Cher, Vivian Leigh, Brigitte Bardot, Michelle Phillips, Liv Ullman, Diana Ross, Vanessa Redgrave, Leslie Caron, Candice Bergen, Diane Sawyer, Isabelle Adjani, Madonna.
Let's make it easier. Of the famous Hollywood actresses who shone at some point from the sixties to the nineties, let's include all of them except one: Shirley MacLaine. And that's only because she's the sister.
But his conquests were not limited to actresses. There were members of royalty like Princess Anne, great dancers like Maya Plisetskaya or models like Elle McPherson.
Warren Beatty, who turns 85 today, is the biggest playboy in the history of Hollywood. His record of romantic conquests seems inexhaustible. However, all of that is part of a distant past. He retired from these affairs thirty years ago. From the moment he married Annette Bening, Warren Beatty says he has known true happiness.
One of the songs whose hidden history generates the most intrigue is You 're So Vain by Carly Simon. It has been said that the vain character who “surely thinks that the song is about him” is Mick Jagger (who sings backing vocals on the song) or some other star of the song. But the vast majority say that the protagonist is none other than Warren Beatty who had an affair with Carly in the seventies.
That vanity is undeniable. Former lovers told of waking up in the middle of the night and finding him looking at himself in the mirror, arranging his hair, practicing some looks. The woman continued sleeping. And, two hours later, when she woke up again, Warren was still sitting in front of his reflection. His narcissism knows no bounds. For a time he was a very good friend of Muhammad Ali. They stopped seeing each other not only because of the boxer's advancing Parkinson's disease. They say that Warren couldn't stand going to a bar with his friend and having all the attention on the other.
The most disparate anecdotes are attributed to him. They say that at the beginning of the seventies he called the composer and singer Carole King to propose having s-- with her. Carole refused, telling him that she was in a relationship and several months pregnant. “Yes, for that very reason,” Warren replied. “I would like to prove that: I have never been with a pregnant woman.”
Although his s**ual adventures with celebrities are remembered – almost all of them that passed before him – Beatty did not discriminate. On the set, all women were the object of his seduction and his attempts to have s*x with them. They say that his trailer between takes was very busy. However, he never boasted of his conquests. Everything that is known about his s3xual life was told by several of his partners and never by him.
His s*xual debut was not precocious. He had his first experience at the age of twenty. “For years I believed that I would marry the first woman I had s*x with. And I would live with her forever,” he told Norman Mailer in an interview for Vanity Fair in 1991. He came to Hollywood to follow in his sister’s footsteps. But he was reluctant to use her name to get opportunities. He wanted to make his own way. In one of his first castings he had to be paired with a very beautiful 22-year-old girl, daughter of a celebrity, Jane Fonda. They had to recreate a love scene. They quickly went through the script and got to the kissing part. The director’s assistants had to ask them to stop the scene. But they weren’t acting. The intensity of the kiss was real. Neither of them got the role, but they became a couple. However, a few weeks later while eating at a restaurant in Los Angeles, Warren saw Joan Collins at the next table. A few days later he was dating her. From that moment on, he jumped from star to star.
Among other things, Warren Beatty's amorous capacity produced some great quotes, unforgettable one-liners. Sonia Braga, when asked about her years in the Mecca of Cinema and her affair with the actor, said that it was inevitable and explained: “Going to Hollywood and not sleeping with Warren is like going to the Vatican and not going to see the Pope.” Beatty as an obligatory destination.
The other quote is from Woody Allen. When he was asked how he wanted to be reincarnated, he didn't hesitate for a second: “I would be reincarnated in the fingertips of Warren Beatty.”
That reputation as a playboy made Peter Biskind, one of his many biographers (and author of Easy Riders, Ranging Bulls, a history of American cinema in the seventies), in his book Star in which he tells the life of Beatty, calculate that the actor slept with 12,775 different women. The calculation would be one woman per day for thirty consecutive years. When in one of the few interviews he gives he was asked about the subject, Warren replied: “Nobody in their right mind believes that figure to be true, right? That would imply that I have never slept with a woman more than once and that I got a new one every day of my adult life. Absolutely absurd.”
The number of his conquests will always be uncertain but large. Someone counted the celebrities with whom he was linked and came to list more than one hundred. Cher defined the situation very well: “He was with all the women I know.”
Someone said that there were several years in which the five nominees for the Oscar for best actress were Warren's occasional partners. Many of those seasons should be added to several of those who were candidates for supporting actresses.
That reputation as a playboy was his best reassurance. It was what caused the desire of others – beyond his beauty, intelligence, power and money – to always rest on him. What ended up making him irresistible. A perfect feedback.
Beatty, whenever he can, remembers that s*xual relations are something good, enjoyable and desirable. But that he experienced his peaks of s*xual excitement and comfort in monogamous relationships. According to him, the day his luck changed, the day he became very lucky, was when he met Annette Bening. With her he found love. They have been together for thirty years. They have four children: Stephen Ira, a transgender activist and poet, Ben, Isabel and Ella. Bening postponed her career for her family. “My priorities are clear. First to be a mother, then a wife and finally an actress.” She had been chosen as the new Catwoman for Batman Returns in 1992 but had to give up the role when she became pregnant. Her place was taken by Michelle Pfeiffer.
Against all odds, the marriage has survived for three decades.
When no one else did, he took great care of his physical appearance. He washed his hair with six cans of beer (he had been assured that it had a beneficial effect), ate soy burgers, drank carrot juice and followed a rigorous and healthy diet; before each scene, he would do his own eyelashes and eyebrows and argue with the costumers for hours about his clothes. For s*x, he took vitamins every day.
The vast majority of the women he was with have fond memories of him. They speak not only of his physical prowess, but of his power of seduction, of the attention he gave them and of his tireless s*xual appetite. And of his discretion. At one point, when he was much younger, he boasted that he never went to sleep without having had se*x during the course of the day. His partners say that once was not enough. Joan Collins spoke of six or seven opportunities a day. “I don't remember much because I just lay there. It was like a continuum. I didn't complain," the actress recalled. But many left him because of his voracity, because they didn't want to limit the relationship to the s*xual and the obligation to maintain that frenetic pace.
But the situation turned around while he was directing Dick Tracy. No one doubted that the director and the leading actress would maintain a relationship. Madonna and Warren Beatty became the couple of the moment. The most s*xual woman in the business and the most famous lover. Some images of that relationship were perpetuated in To Bed With Madonna, the documentary that records one of the actress's tours. Every time the camera focused on Beatty, he excused himself and said that he was in another stage of his career. So much so that it seems that the singer's passion was too much for him, that he couldn't handle her energy and youth. Madonna used to make jokes about his age and about his (new) need for rest amidst so much intensity. Having already passed fifty years, vitamins were not enough. Warren Beatty's next known relationship was the definitive one, the one he built with Annette Bening.
(There is a great anecdote about the Madonna-Beatty documentary: when it came time to see the first cut, Madonna went with Warren. After the screening, the actor didn't make too many comments. But the next day a letter arrived at the production company's offices stating that all the scenes in which Beatty appeared were removed from the final version. They negotiated, as if they were two strangers, and a few brief images of Warren remained. The couple broke up after a few weeks.)
Warren Beatty is much more than a prolific lover. His career spans more than 65 years. Any legend still active (or recently retired) that one can think of came into the scene after him. Jack Nicholson, De Niro, Pacino, Eastwood, Woody Allen. He is a producer, director, screenwriter, actor. He received all the possible awards (the Oscar for Reds) and dozens of nominations. He knew box office success with several of his films. Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Dick Tracy, Bugsy. He also participated in two colossal failures such as Ishtar (with Dustin Hoffman and Isabelle Adjani) and Rules Don’t Apply, his last film about Howard Hughes, another megalomaniac, set in Hollywood at the end of the fifties, his Hollywood, which he arrived at the age of twenty. We must not forget that he was the one-man band in Bulworth, his excellent look at power filmed in 1998.
Very detailed, his projects are delayed for years. To justify his obsession in the editing room, he quotes Paul Valery: “A poem is never finished, it is only abandoned.”
He got his first big role in 1961. Splendor in the Grass (by Elia Kazan) alongside Natalie Wood was his big gateway. But the big explosion came at the end of the sixties with Bonnie and Clyde. The film, at first, received bad reviews from the more traditional media. However, it meant a change of era and the definitive consecration of Warren Beatty.
For Warren, the good thing about fame is that the interlocutor always answers the call when he is on the other side, the access. And success allowed him to act and direct from time to time and the rest of the time to enjoy life. That led him to reject many roles that later became a great success: Brando in Last Tango in Paris, Butch Cassidy, Nixon in Frost/Nixon, Kennedy in his war memoirs (he resisted the request of the president himself) and many more.
Pop culture will remember him with several milestones. Clyde Barrow who, together with Faye Dunaway's Bonnie, marked the beginning of the change in cinema, a new era; the legendary lover: when talking about a great seducer, it is impossible not to think of him first; the protagonist of You 're So Vain; to be included in the list of the greatest flops in history thanks to Ishtar. And, of course, being the one who announced the wrong Oscar winner, when he had difficulty opening the envelope and said La La Land. Although once again his everlasting smile got him through unscathed.
