On My Screen: Annette Bening On ‘Nyad’s Challenges, ‘American Beauty’ Memories & The Best Advice She Ever Received
deadline.comAnnette Bening still likes to swim, despite the brutal eight hours a day she spent in the water for her Netflix film Nyad. Bening stars as Diana Nyad, who, at 64, became the first person ever to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.
Bening trained for a year to perfect her stroke, and got to know Nyad herself, with Jodie Foster alongside her, starring as Nyad’s real-life friend and coach, Bonnie Stoll. “I swim all the time, it’s become part of my staying sane,” Bening says now, adding that she learned from Nyad that pushing oneself beyond what you thought you could do is “a way to know yourself, and that’s a way to expand your own idea about yourself in the world, and also increase your joy, and increase your appreciation.” Here, Bening looks back over some favorite moments in her career, from The Grifters, to American Beauty and beyond. My First Film Lesson It was on my third movie, The Grifters.
We were doing a scene outside, and I’m teetering along on these high heels. Stephen Frears said to me, “I want you to stop, then look, then start walking.” So, we did it again, and I didn’t do it, this technical thing he asked me to do.
And he came up to me after the take, and he said, “Hey, you didn’t do it.” And I said, “Oh, I forgot.” And he said, “You’re paid to remember.” He was entirely justified.
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