Dutton Ranch's Annette Bening Has A Sizeable Age Gap With Husband Warren Beatty

Warren Beatty's love life was the stuff of legends — until he went and settled all the way down. Throughout the peak of his career between the '60s and '80s, the "Bonnie and Clyde" star was one of Hollywood's ultimate playboys. But that changed when Beatty met Annette Bening in November 1990. By then, he was 53, while the "Dutton Ranch" actor was 32. They fell in love while filming "Bugsy" and have been together ever since. But that doesn't mean the sizable age gap was irrelevant to Beatty and Bening's marriage.

Bening admits it has had an impact on their relationship, but not in a negative way. "I've learnt valuable lessons about life from Warren. He's 21 years older than I am and we've always been at different stages of life. He's got a lot of experience," she told The Times in 2018. Besides, she had already discovered that she had a type before she met Beatty, so she wasn't surprised to have fallen for a much older man. "I had never been attracted to younger guys. I had, from my late teens, always liked men who were older than me," she told the Express in 2011.

In Beatty's view, his age played an important role in his decision to settle down and start a family. "When you're older and you meet somebody, the decision-making process is a lot shorter. You know, and you say, 'I know.' And that happened here and I listened to it," he told Roger Ebert in 1994. All these years later, they have proved the age gap didn't work against them.

Warren Beatty and Annette Bening were an unlikely pair. And yet, they have made it work. Beatty and Bening now share four children and more than three decades together. In the Hollywood world of fleeting marriages, they achieved the seemingly impossible. That's even more impressive given their public personas. Beatty was a Hollywood icon with a notable dating life. (Cher famously told Vanity Fair in 1990: "Warren has probably been with everybody I know, and unfortunately I am one of them.") Bening was on the opposite end of the spectrum, having always kept a low profile.

No one thought they would last, something the "American Beauty" actor was very much aware of. "We know the truth but there are others who cannot believe we can possibly be together," she said in the Express interview. And ultimately, those differences played in their favor. Beatty's big star status wasn't something Bening had been after. While she has achieved considerable success, she always prioritized her family and projects that felt meaningful to her. "I have never considered our careers a competition. Warren has nothing to prove to anybody and I've limited myself to an average of one movie a year since our wedding," she said.

As for Beatty, he hadn't been sleeping around for the sake of the lifestyle. He just hadn't met anyone he saw himself with long-term. "I always felt I wasn't trying to avoid marriage, I was trying to avoid divorce. I had no doubt when I met Annette that it was time to get married," he told Today in 2016. When he found the one, he was ready to commit.