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"CAROLE RADZIWILL: No one plays a woman on the verge of cracking up better than you: American Beauty, Being Julia and now your latest role in Running With Scissors. You don&amp;amp;#8217;t seem crazy&amp;amp;#8212;are you? ANNETTE BENING: [Laughs.] No! I&amp;amp;#8217;ve always been pretty levelheaded. In show business you need to have a certain internal stability. But when I study people, like the character in this movie, I feel very close to them. That&amp;amp;#8217;s part of my job, to get to a point where I can imagine that happening. CR: You can? AB: Sure. My character in Running With Scissors is manic-depressive. She starts out as a wonderfully eccentric person, and then descends into a terrible illness. CR: This mother has no maternal instinct, and she gives away her only child so she can pursue her dreams. Yet, unbelievably, there&amp;amp;#8217;s a humanity to her. AB: Yes, because we&amp;amp;#8217;re not all evil or all good, and we all make mistakes to one degree or another. In a film, if you can capture what&amp;amp;#8217;s going on underneath, you can begin to make a connection between the character and the people watching it. CR: How come, in all the years you&amp;amp;#8217;ve been famous, I&amp;amp;#8217;ve never read about you stumbling out of a bar at two in the morning? AB: Because I&amp;amp;#8217;m home, asleep in my bed! I think what&amp;amp;#8217;s interesting about the whole paparazzi thing is that unless you&amp;amp;#8217;re Brad Pitt or Madonna, you can pretty much avoid it. You know when you&amp;amp;#8217;re going to an opening that you will be photographed, so that&amp;amp;#8217;s fine. And you know the restaurants that have paparazzi, so you don&amp;amp;#8217;t go to them. CR: I read an interview once where you talked about something called &amp;amp;#8220;scene spill.&amp;amp;#8221; AB: Oh, mmm-hm. [Laughs.] CR: So you&amp;amp;#8217;re working on a film and there&amp;amp;#8217;s a love interest and it &amp;amp;#8220;spills over&amp;amp;#8221; outside of the film. For instance, with Bugsy you were working with your future husband&amp;amp;#8230; AB: It&amp;amp;#8217;s so funny. It happens all the time. CR: The boundaries blur, between the pretend movie life and real life? AB: Yes, and sometimes you end up married for 15 years with four children! [Laughs.] But in a way, I fall in love with all the people I&amp;amp;#8217;m working with, women, directors, everybody. As actors, that&amp;amp;#8217;s actually one of the real pleasures of the work. You have this weird opportunity to get unnaturally close to people very quickly. CR: Your family is as close to royalty in this town as it gets. Does the insatiable media scrutiny annoy you? AB: If you&amp;amp;#8217;re an actor, you have to find a way to make peace with all the media attention. Recently a very sweet journalist asked me, &amp;amp;#8220;So who made the first move, you or Warren?&amp;amp;#8221; I thought, I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been married for 15 years, and somebody is still asking me that! CR: So who made the first move? AB: [Laughs.] It was pretty mutual. I tell people, &amp;amp;#8220;You know when you met your girlfriend or your wife or your boyfriend?&amp;amp;#8221; It wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t any different than that. CR: Too bad, this is where fairy tales come in handy. They are more exciting than real life. AB: And much more simple. CR: There are whisperings that you&amp;amp;#8217;re going to be nominated again for an Oscar. AB: Oh, we&amp;amp;#8217;d better knock on something! Carole Radziwill is the author of What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2006/12/lunch-date-annette-bening/2>