Annette Bening is an American actress. In 1992, she married American actor and director Warren Beatty, with whom she has four children. Annette Bening was born in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of Shirley, a church singer, and Grant, a sales training consultant and insurance salesman.

Her sister and two brothers are Jane, Bradley and Byron. The family moved to Wichita, Kansas, in 1959, where Annette Bening spent her early childhood. In 1965, her father took a job with a company in San Diego, California. She began acting in junior high school, playing the lead in The Sound of Music. She studied drama at Patrick Henry High School.

She then spent a year working as a cook on a charter boat taking fishing parties out on the Pacific Ocean, and scuba diving for recreation. Annette Bening attended San Diego Mesa College, then completed an academic degree in theatre arts at San Francisco State University.