Arguably Bening’s most iconic role came in 1999 and landed her a best lead actress Oscar nomination for playing the complex and uptight realtor Carolyn Burnham in American Beauty.
Looking back on the role – which she played opposite Kevin Spacey in his second Oscar-winning performance, as Carolyn’s tortured husband Lester – Bening mentioned the “duality” in Carolyn as something that stood out in the character.
“She loved (him) so much and she wanted so much to connect with him. (That) was at the heart of it,” she said.
At the 2000 Oscars, Bening would lose out to Hilary Swank, who won best actress for Boys Don’t Cry. The same would happen five years later, when Bening was again nominated for best actress for Being Julia, and Swank snagged the trophy for Million Dollar Baby.
But Bening only has fond memories of the time and of making the often overlooked Being Julia, in which she got to portray a vindictive and calculating stage actress in 1930s London who somehow remains completely charming.
“I got the (Being Julia) script and read it and thought, ‘Are you kidding me? Am I really being asked me to do this? This is so cool! This is so rich. It’s so complex!'” she remembered.
The movie, directed by István Szabó, whom Bening called “the king of Hungarian cinema,” was filmed in Budapest in the summer of 2003. Bening’s children were young at the time and with her during production, which she called “quite an experience.”
“We still have lots of funny memories about being in Budapest at the time,” she said. “It was a dream, really a dream.”
