Biography of Warren Beatty

Henry Warren Beatty is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter whose career spans over six decades. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards. Including four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, three for Original Screenplay, and one for Adapted Screenplay. Winning Best Director for Reds . Beatty is one of only two people to have been nominated for acting in, directing, writing, and producing the same film, and he did so twice: first for Heaven Can Wait , and again with Reds. Eight of the films he has produced have earned 53 Academy nominations, and in 1999, he was awarded the Academy's highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. Beatty has been nominated for 18 Golden Globe Awards, winning six, including the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he was honored with in 2007. Among his Golden Globeâ€“nominated films are Splendor in the Grass , his screen debut, and Bonnie and Clyde , Shampoo , Heaven Can Wait , Reds , Dick Tracy , Bugsy , Bulworth and Rules Don't Apply , all of which he also produced. Director and collaborator Arthur Penn described Beatty as "the perfect producer", adding, "He makes everyone demand the best of themselves. Warren stays with a picture through editing, mixing and scoring. He plain works harder than anyone else I have ever seen." Beatty's films often have a left-leaning political message. Praising Bulworth, Patricia J. Williams said: â€œ knows power... and this movie is effective precisely because it takes on the issue of power." Henry Warren Beaty was born March 30, 1937, in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne , was a teacher from Nova Scotia. His father, Ira Owens Beaty, had studied for a PhD in educational psychology and worked as a teacher and school administrator, in addition to dealing in real estate. Beatty's grandparents were also teachers. The family was Baptist. While Warren Beaty was still a child, Ira Beaty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk and then to Arlington and Waverly, then back to Arlington, eventually taking a position at Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in 1945. During the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington. Beatty's older sister is the actress, dancer and writer Shirley MacLaine. His uncle, by marriage, was Canadian politician A. A. MacLeod. Beatty became interested in movies before his teens, when he often accompanied his sister to theaters. One film that had an important early influence on him was The Philadelphia Story , which he saw when it was re-released in the 1950s. He noticed a strong resemblance between its star, Katharine Hepburn, and his mother, in both appearance and personality, saying that they symbolized "perpetual integrity". Another film that affected him was Love Affair , which starred one of his favorite actors, Charles Boyer. He found it "deeply moving," and recalls that "This is a movie I always wanted to make." He did remake Love Affair in 1994, in which he starred alongside Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn. Among his favorite TV shows in the 1950s was the Texaco Star Theatre, and he began to mimic one of its regular host comedians, Milton Berle. Beatty learned to do a "superb imitation of Berle and his routine," said a friend, and he often used Berle-type humor at home. His sister Shirley MacLaine's lasting memories of her brother include seeing him reading books by Eugene O'Neill or singing along to Al Jolson records. In Rules Don't Apply , Beatty plays Howard Hughes, who is shown talking about and singing Jolson songs while flying his plane. MacLaine notedâ€”on what made her brother want to become a filmmaker, sometimes writing, producing, directing and starring in his films: "That's why he's more comfortable behind the camera ... He's in the total-control aspect. He has to have control over everything." Beatty doesn't deny that need; in speaking about his earliest parts, he said "When I acted in films I used to come with suggestions about the script, the lighting, the wardrobe, and people used to say 'Waddya want, to produce the picture as well?' And I used to say that I supposed I did." Beatty was a star football player at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington. Encouraged to act by the success of his sister, who had recently established herself as a Hollywood star, he decided to work as a stagehand at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. during the summer before his senior year. After graduation, he was reportedly offered ten college football scholarships, but turned them all down to study liberal arts at Northwestern University , where he joined the Sigma Chi fraternity. After his first year, he left college to move to New York City, where he studied acting under Stella Adler at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.