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Everything to Know About Annette Bening, Her Famous Husband and Their 4 Kids
The star of Peacock’s Apples Never Fall enjoys one of Hollywood’s most enduring marriages… and a happy family.
She plays the main character at the center of the mystery that drives Peacock’s compelling new event series Apples Never Fall (stream it here!). But as longtime fans know, there’s much more to know about Annette Bening and her fascinating career, both on and off the screen.
Bening stars in Apples Never Fall as Joy Delaney, wife to a seemingly loving husband (played by Sam Neill) and mother to four grown-up children (Alison Brie, Jake Lacy, Conor Merrigan-Turner, and Essie Randles), all of whom strike the image of a picture-perfect family. But when Joy disappears, the event touches off a potential tragedy, sparking an introspective peek into the Delaney family’s far more complicated past.
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Bening, of course, is an accomplished and versatile star who’s turned in some truly riveting performances over the course of her decades-spanning career: She played neurotic wife and real estate agent Carolyn Burnham in 1999’s critically adored drama American Beauty, the wife of a legendary gangster in 1991’s Bugsy, and the ill-fated gal pal of John Cusack’s morally-challenged con man in the 1990 film adaptation of noir masterpiece The Grifters — to name only a small handful. And this weekend, she's up for a Best Actress Oscar playing Diana Nyad in the film Nyad.
In her personal life as well as on the screen, it’s safe to say that Bening occupies rare Hollywood air as a truly fascinating and beloved entertainment icon. Want to know more about some of Bening’s most interesting family ties? Keep scrolling!
Who is Annette Bening’s husband, Warren Beatty?
Shortly before production began on Bugsy in the early 1990s, Bening met her costar Warren Beatty over “a business lunch to discuss the movie,” as People puts it, and began a Hollywood power-couple relationship that continues to this day. Beatty and Bening were married in 1992, not long after their first child, Stephen, was born, and they've remained happily together ever since.
The couple’s 32-year marriage is still going strong, even as both Bening and Beatty have maintained screen careers that have cast each actor in some of the most memorable movies of the past three decades (and even well beyond). Born 21 years before Bening, Beatty’s film career already was well established at the time the two first met on Bugsy. Even before the 1991 gangster flick, he’d already starred in an extensive string of film classics like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Shampoo (1975), and the comic book-based Dick Tracy (1990).
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Beatty was smitten with his future wife from the moment he and Bening first met. “I love her, and I'm going to marry her,” he told Bugsy director Bary Levinson after that fateful first lunch together (via The New York Post). It turned out to be a momentous Hollywood decision for Beatty, a capitulation to romance that closed the chapter on one of the most famous bachelor stints in modern entertainment history.
Despite the couple’s age gap, Bening and Beatty have remained a steadfast glamour couple, anchored (as Bening once told British outlet The Times) by their separate but complementary outlooks on life. “He’s 21 years older than I am, and we’ve always been at different stages of life,” she explained. “He’s got a lot of experience. But we’re very different in many ways. The crucial thing is that while we want many of the same things in life, we’ve thrived because we approach things very differently.”
Who are Annette Bening’s children?
Bening and Beatty have had four children together: Stephen, Benjamin, Isabel, and Ella. As celebrity veterans of the abundant media attention that coupled-up movie stars tend to attract, the pair has been especially protective of their kids’ private lives, often preferring to afford their children the space to chart their own public course rather than coax them into the spotlight.
RELATED: Annette Bening Is Up for an Oscar and Starring in a New Peacock Show — Look Back on Her Career
What to Know About Stephen Beatty
Now 32, Stephen continues to have Bening’s proud support more than 10 years after he first publicly shared that he identifies as a transgender man. Both Bening and Beaty have been stalwart admirers of Stephen’s fortitude throughout the journey. “He's managed something that's very challenging with great style and great intelligence,” she shared with AARP in 2019. “He's an articulate, thoughtful person, and I'm very, very proud of him.”
What to Know About Benjamin Beatty
Bening and Beatty welcomed along their second child Benjamin in 1994, and the 29-year-old may be embarking on a similar acting path already well traveled by his famous parents. Benjamin has appeared alongside George Clooney and Josh Brolin in the Coen Brothers’ 2016 film Hail, Caesar!, as well as with Gillian Anderson in the 2018 sci-fi thriller UFO. Growing right alongside an expanding family, Bening has said, always felt inevitable for her. “…I always, always wanted to be a mom, from when I was a little kid,” she recently shared on NBC’s Today.
What to Know About Isabel Beatty
The family growth trend continued when Bening and Beatty welcomed Isabel to the family in 1997, and Isabel — now 27 — appears to enjoy being closely involved with the rest of her close-knit celebrity gang. In addition to starring in independent entertainment projects like 2018’s Murder Tag and 2019’s Baggage, Isabel periodically posts fun updates about milestone family moments — like this fun photo Tweet in celebration of her famous father’s 85th birthday — on her social media feeds.
What to Know About Ella Beatty
As the couple’s youngest child, 23-year-old Ella Beatty seems to also have been bitten by the same acting bug as her iconic parents. Since graduating from The Juilliard School in 2022, Ella has appeared in Ryan Murphy’s drama series Feud: Truman vs. The Swans (as the daughter of Truman Capote’s paramour John O’Shea), a series whose high profile suggests more acting opportunities await her in the future.
RELATED: Annette Bening Reveals Her Family Life Inspired This Aspect of Apples Never Fall
“Sometimes it's hard for me to let go and just remember, ‘Oh, that's not my job anymore,’” Bening recently reflected to People on how it feels to see her kids grow up and watch their adult lives unfold as an empty-nester. “I'm so proud of these adult children, who aren't children, but they're my kids. They’re all so different and they're all out there discovering themselves and their voices. We think we're there to teach them, and, of course, what we realize is that that they teach us everything.”
Watch Annette Bening in her newest role as family matriarch Joy Delaney in Apples Never Fall, streaming now on Peacock.
