Being Bening

If Annette Bening is nominated for an Oscar this year for Mike Mills' 20th Century Women, as seems likely to those who foretell such things, it will be her fifth such nomination in just over two-and-a-half decades on movie screens. (For nearly a decade before appearing in her first film, the conservatory-trained Bening was an acclaimed stage actress, earning a Tony nomination in 1987.) Bening's career has traced an unusually steady upward arc for a woman of her age in Hollywood, especially given...