Annette Bening

THE SEACULL

STARRING

Annette Bening,
Corey Stoll,
Saoirse Ronam

DIRECTED MY
Michael Mayer

RELEASE DATE
5.11

- Ruth Kinane

ANNETTE BENING FIRST encountered the character Irina Arkadina when she was in her early 20s. As a master’s student at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater in the early 1980s, Bening starred in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, playing the narcissistic and aging actress who obsesses over her own stardom while belittling her son’s artistic aspirations. Now the 59-year-old star is returning to the role, this time playing Irina in Michael Mayer’s film version of the Russian tragicomedy. “On the stage, of course, it’s alive, and that’s what’s so key about going to the theater and what can be so energizing about it,” Bening says. “But there’s something that a camera can do. It can sneak into moments that the stage just can’t.”