Annette Bening Says Husband Warren Beatty’s Intelligence Is ‘Biggest Aphrodisiac’: ‘Funny and Super Smart’

Annette Bening recalls her first impressions of her husband of nearly 32 years, Warren Beatty.

As Nyad actress, 65, appeared on The Drew Barrymore Showshe recalled her first meeting with Beatty, who is now 86 years old, on the set of their 1991 film Bugsy. In the film, Beatty played early 20th century mobster Benjamin Siegel (aka “Bugsy”), while Bening played his girlfriend, Virginia Hill.

“He was making this movie. They hired me to play the woman in the movie, and, yeah, we fell in love,” Bening recalled. When Drew Barrymore, 48, asked if the couple felt “love at first sight,” Bening laughed and said that Beatty claims he fell in love immediately.

“So for me, I have to be honest, I was going to meet him and he was incredibly intelligent. It was honestly the most— [that was] the biggest aphrodisiac,” she said. “Funny and super smart. Now he’s also very handsome.”

“It doesn’t hurt. He’s not Warren Beatty for nothing,” Barrymore added.

“It didn’t hurt,” Bening agreed. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is the right guy.’ ”

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Annette Bening and Warren Beaty March 14, 1992

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Beatty previously told PEOPLE that Bening blew him away the moment they met. He famously said Bugsy director Barry Levinson, “I’ll marry her,” after his first meeting with Bening.

However, back in 2016, he noted that he promised Bening he wouldn’t hit on her while they were working together on Bugsy — but by the end of filming, he invited her to dinner.

Bening said further The Drew Barrymore Show that she initially approached meeting Beatty as a strictly professional relationship. The couple got married in 1992.

“I was really thinking about it professionally, to be honest, I really was when I first met him,” she said. “I didn’t think there would be, like, a thing between us. I think marriage is the biggest thing and the biggest challenge to really make it work and stay together, and that’s the thing that I’m so, so proud of with us.”

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Annette Bening and Warren Beatty September 25, 2021

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Beatty and Bening now have four children. In 2016, Beatty told PEOPLE that Bening was so blown away by their first meeting that he “remembers[ed] I lost interest in the garlic chicken I ate within 20 seconds.” He joked: “And the garlic chicken was really good.”

Bening shared with PEOPLE in 2022 that Beatty proved to be “very talkative” when they first met. “He was very passionate about the film he was going to make,” she said at the time. “He had a lot to say—and he was charming, for sure.”

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