Fame, he says, also gave him a spectacular amount of access. Access to all kinds of people, including those in the White House. Beatty was a political junkie early -- he campaigned for Bobby Kennedy in 1968 and also stumped for George McGovern and Gary Hart. He knows the senior Bushes well enough to refer to Barbara as a "very funny lady." It seems, actually, as though he knows everyone.
He has a story about Stanley Kubrick. Billy Wilder. Jack Kennedy and Jack Nicholson, his great friend, who will introduce him at the Kennedy Center tonight. Marlon, as in Brando, who, like Nicholson, was a Mulholland Drive neighbor. Paul Thomas Anderson. Elisabeth Shue (whom he tries to call, mid-interview). Joe DiMaggio. Irving "Swifty" Lazar. Katharine Graham. There is a tale about a conference in Davos, Switzerland, where Yasser Arafat tried to pick him up -- literally -- and he met Shimon Peres and Hosni Mubarak. He collects people. It is his art form.
"As you get older, the most valuable thing we have is time," says father of four Warren Beatty, who chooses projects -- cinematic or otherwise -- with great care.
(Jonathan Alcorn For The Washington Post)
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ABOUT THE HONORS
Every year since 1978
the Kennedy Center has saluted a handful of national icons for their "lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts." This year's honorees are to be celebrated tonight with a gala performance and dinner at the Kennedy Center Opera House. The show will be broadcast Dec. 21 at 9 p.m. on Channel 9.
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It gets later. At one point, about 8:30 p.m., Beatty looks at his watch, expresses surprise. He makes a joke about how he doesn't know how to shut up.
"If Annette were here," he says, "she'd be rolling her eyes."
But she knows her husband by now. He's a talker. So the conversation turns to writers, the gossip industry, doing homework with the kids. Politics is visited and revisited. Finally, after 10 p.m., you make your way out to the parking lot, still talking as the goodbyes are said.
It isn't really over, of course. There is a need for a quick follow-up, some fact-checking. So he phones, you phone back, he phones again. When you finally connect, a 10-minute call turns into 20, then 40, then it's more than an hour and dinner is unmade, your child unattended.
You gingerly raise the subject of his past -- a mostly off-limits topic -- and, specifically, how he uses it for self-deprecation. "If I couldn't make fun of all that," he says, slowly, "that would not be good. I have no objection to my past."
He stops.
"That's too big a subject to give you a quote on."
He volunteers, then, that he is happier than he has ever been. He describes Bening as "extraordinary," his "superior half." He says he feels very fortunate to have the children.
"You change," he says.
And some things don't. It was, after all, never just about the women. Beatty's great talent, reputation dictates, is the ability to draw others in, draw them close, be they male or female, Republican or Democrat, friend or stranger. He may be 67 now, happily married, a father. But the description still suits him.
Warren Beatty: master of seduction.
Beatty chuckles.
"There's nothing that I enjoy more, let's put it that way."
