Bening: ‘We need more films about older women and sex’

Annette Bening is delighted about her latest film – and a big reason for that is because she gets to showcase a real-life story of role reversal not often featured on the big screen.

Bening plays fading Hollywood starlet Gloria Grahame, who embarks on a romance with a much younger British actor, played by Jamie Bell, in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.

Grahame was a big name in her heyday, starring in films such as Oklahoma!, It’s a Wonderful Life and winning an Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful in 1953.

The film is based on the memoir of Peter Turner (Bell) and has been brought to life with the help of Bond producer, Barbara Broccoli, who knew Peter and Gloria when they were together.

Bening says playing an older woman in a relationship with a younger man was refreshing.

“It was wonderful. When I started (acting) when I was 30-something, I was always playing alongside men who were much older than I was – Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, my husband (Warren Beatty). Wonderful actors, I’m not complaining, I loved it – but that is the norm and so to have it turned the other way, in a way that’s loving and sophisticated [was great].”

The film, directed by Paul McGuigan, looks back on the pair’s relationship as Gloria, now suffering from cancer, turns up at Peter’s family home in Liverpool years after the couple split up.

Bening says she and Broccoli, who are friends, had been “percolating” the idea of making the film for about 20 years.

The actress kept being drawn back to Peter’s book: “It’s a great read, the way he writes is the way the film’s composed, where you go in between the past and present in a seamless way”.

BBC