It’s perhaps difficult to use the word “anonymity” in relation to a three-time Oscar nominee, but like her husband Warren Beatty, Annette Bening exhibits a choosiness that often keeps her a bit removed from the front-loaded memories of those who dissect and debate screen acting. That will likely change in 2010. While the Chinese New Year may nominally denote it as the year of the tiger, Bening should be receiving massive amounts of ink well into next winter, courtesy of superlative turns in two films, including Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right. First out of the gate, however, is Rodrigo Garcia’s Mother and Child, in which Bening breathes life into Karen, an abrasive single woman who’s still carrying emotional carrying baggage from a teenage pregnancy when, in short order, she loses her elderly live-in mother and finds her interpersonal defenses slowly ground down by Paco (Jimmy Smits), a sensitive coworker. I caught up with Bening recently to talk about playing a woman in turmoil, teenage pregnancy, and the motivation of fear. For the interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.