By Grace Murphy and Gill Pringle
Annette Bening is no stranger to portraying complex female characters. From her Oscar nominated performance as Carolyn Burnham in American Beauty, to her portrayal of the free-spirited Dorothea Fields in 2016’s 20th Century Women; Bening’s latest role as silver screen star Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is no less dynamic than her previous turns.
The film, based on Peter Turner’s book of the same name, is set several years after Gloria’s Oscar nominated performance as Laurel Gray in In a Lonely Place. As explored in the film, the volatile final years of Grahame’s life were marked by her waning film star status, terminal illness and her relationship with Peter Turner, an English actor almost thirty years her junior.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool has been praised for its tender treatment of Grahame’s final years. As she suffered with breast cancer, Turner’s working-class family nursed her inside their Liverpool home. Bening reveals that achieving such tenderness “requires the kind of sensitivity among everybody including the director, the cinematographer, the producers and certainly the other actor.”
Bening further discusses both her and co-star Jamie Bell’s enthusiasm towards portraying the unique connection Grahame and Turner shared, despite the significant age gap between them.
“He was very kind to me, and very supportive, and I tried to be the same with him,” Bening says of Bell. “We found a way to just professionally do all that stuff that was comfortable because we really felt it was so important to try to show the connection that they had. Because they had it.”
Whilst Bening had studied Gloria’s career for Stephen Frears’ The Grifters, finding information about Gloria’s private life with Turner was made difficult by a book which aimed to disparage her name.
Bening explains, “there’s a really bad book about her that’s filled with apograph and anecdotes that aren’t true. So I do have a lot of questions about her life that I probably will never have answered. Her son did come to our screening in London. We had wanted to respect his privacy, which I felt very strongly about, we all did. But he liked the movie very much. I just wanted to take him aside afterwards and ask him a million questions. I didn’t have a chance to but maybe I’ll have another chance to sit and have a talk with him.”
It is no question however that Grahame’s career which began to wane after filming Oklahoma!, is in stark contrast to the lifetime of dynamic female characters that Bening has had the opportunity to play. Whilst a clear sign of an ever-changing experience for women in Hollywood, Bening attributes finding complex characters like Gloria to luck, saying “I just feel really lucky that I’ve been able to find these parts. It’s true, it’s like the unwritten rules for men and women in Hollywood are so different.”
One unwritten rule in particular contributed towards Gloria’s fading star status. A once common fate for older actresses, age inhibited Grahame’s ability to find screen roles in her final years. Bening, who has been in the industry for almost thirty years, discusses the importance of playing women her own age on screen. “I’ve always wanted to try to be an actress my whole life. I assume I’ll continue to want to. But as I go, I’m interested in portraying women that are my own age. With that goes a certain amount of freedom. It’s not that I don’t have vanity, of course sometimes I think ‘uh this is how I look, I have wrinkles’ or whatever, but then once you show me a part and it’s a real woman with complexities and strengths and weaknesses and frailties and faults but also heroism, and you know those are the parts we are all dying to play, the people with great range and complexity. Those are the parts that we look for.”
The changing landscape for women in Hollywood was dramatically shifted by the Weinstein allegations of 2017. When asked about her thoughts, Bening describes it as a tipping point. “I think it’s such a serious time, and that a lot of these women and men that are speaking up, and some of the men, I think it’s really hard for them to come forward. And I hope that it relieves their burden to do so, and that the people who’ve taken advantage of other people are held accountable.”
Bening relates this tipping point in the industry to Donald Trump. “I think it has to do with our president. And the fact that President Trump has been accused of this and the way that he’s talked about and treated the women who are speaking out against him. I hope that all of the people who are perpetrators are brought to justice and that women are empowered, and men too, are liberated when they are able to say what has happened to them and be open.”
The actress continues by discussing the potential impact of the allegations on society at large. “I’m hoping that it will resonate into your business, my business and out into the world at large. And for women especially who are in low wage jobs… will it change for those women? I think that’s really going to be the telling point. If you’re a single mum working in a low wage job and you’re being harassed, can you do something? I think that’s really, really what will determine how profound of a change this really is in our culture,” she explains.
Bening’s hope for profound change for both men and women across all industries may soon be realised by the recently launched legal defense fund, ‘Times Up’. The fund, launched by a group of leading actresses in the industry, has already raised millions of dollars, and aims to defend women and men across all industries who have experienced sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is in cinemas March 1, 2018
