Annette Bening beamed like the proud mother she is backstage at New York’s Belasco Theatre last winter when her daughter Ella Beatty made her Broadway debut. Ella, 24, the youngest of her four children with Warren Beatty, arrived on the Great White Way in the family drama Appropriate. Warren, 87, certainly shares his wife’s pride, but he wasn’t feeling up for the trip to New York City. “It’s not easy for him to travel,” a friend exclusively tells Closer, who describes Warren as healthy but “frail” as he approaches his 88th birthday on March 30. “He doesn’t want to deal with airplanes, cars and hotels.”
There is also a certain amount of vanity that’s understandable for a performer who was once lauded for his handsome appearance. “I don’t care who you are. While aging has its benefits, there are days when you don’t feel great or like what you see in the mirror,” says the friend. “Warren would never admit to being that vain though. He’s had a very full life.”
A WORLD OF EXPERIENCE
Blessed with brains and passion as well as beauty, Warren has been nominated for 14 Oscars and won the Academy Award for Best Director for 1981’s Reds. His work always took precedence over his private life until he met Annette during the casting of 1991’s Bugsy. The pair struck up a romance after filming wrapped and wed in 1992. “I waited a long time to be married,” he acknowledged to AARP. Warren said he also waited to have children until he could devote
himself fully.
Fatherhood has been “by far the best thing that happened to me,” he said. Warren remains engaged with his family and the world. “He still reads the New York and Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood trade magazines,” says the friend. “He’s an activist at heart so he still gets riled up about politics. He’s not the leading man anymore, but he has no regrets.”
