The Many Many Loves of Warren Beatty

"Prior to marrying Bening, Beatty was notorious for his large number of romantic relationships that received generous media coverage, having been linked to over 100 female celebrities."

That's one line from Warren Beatty's Wikipedia page. The "personal life" section then mentions four women. That's it. Only four, Warren? Did you edit this page yourself? It's a hilarious underplaying of the most notorious lothario in Hollywood history. In his biography of the actor, Peter Biskind made the admittedly outlandish claim that Beatty slept with around 12,000 women. That seems literally impossible to me, but it also seems more feasible than the coy dismissal of his past that his Wiki page dictates.

Warren Beatty is now 89 years old. He's a father of four who's been with his wife for 36 years. He's an Oscar-winning director, an Oscar-nominated actor, a legendary control freak, one of the faces of New post-studio cinema, and a political power player who was once nicknamed The President of Hollywood. But when he passes, I guarantee you that the first paragraph of every obituary will call him a playboy or make reference to his sex life. It was that big a deal (and that big, from what I've heard.)

What differentiates Beatty from our previous pieces on celebrity love lives is that he’s only married once. There were a couple of engagements and reasonably long-term relationships, but Beatty was a classic lothario who loved and left. The women who fell into his orbit largely seem to have known what they were getting themselves into, and they had a good time with it. Beatty was also someone who enjoyed the spectrum of womanhood. There’s an amazing story of a time he was talking to Dustin Hoffman while making Ishtar (it’s a good movie, get over it.) He was ranting about the production when he suddenly went dumb and couldn’t take his eyes off a woman in the full niqab veil. Hoffman was apparently stunned by how easily distracted he was by a woman he couldn’t even see. So, he asked Warren: If given the chance, is there a single woman on the planet you would not have sex with? Warren thought about it, hard. And he said, “No.” Why? “Because you never know.”

I’m not sure I could even begin to include every single woman Warren Beatty dated (or “dated”) on this list. But I think we can go with some of the most famous ones, and in as chronological an order as I can manage. With apologies to Annette.

CHER

So, this one is icky. Sorry. The one and only Cher was 15 years old when she borrowed her dad's car and was cut off by a Lincoln convertible on Sunset Boulevard. She confronted the man, and it was 25-year-old Warren Beatty, fresh off his breakout role in Splendor in the Grass. “Ten years older than me, Warren was so drop-dead gorgeous I had to steady myself as he asked my name,” Cher recalled in her memoir. He bought her cigarettes, took her back to his place, and they made out. She broke curfew to hang out with Warren, which infuriated her parents until they found out who was checking in on their daughter. Cher and Beatty are apparently still friends to this day. So, yay?

JOAN COLLINS

While he was a relative unknown, Beatty met the future Alexis Carrington in the early '60s and struck up a relationship. They lived together in Paul Newman’s New York apartment and were briefly engaged. Collins said that he proposed to her by concealing the ring in a carton of chopped liver. Romance isn't dead, kids. In 2015, Collins auctioned off a ton of her possessions, including some of Warren's love letters, where he addressed her as "Dear Bird."

Their sex life was wild, of course. Collins said she often had to push him down because his libido was so insatiable. At the age of 26, Collins had an abortion. A year later, the pair split, with her blaming his infidelity. Beatty later described the engagement as "an exaggeration", which seems mean. At least Joan had a great love life post-Warren: Robert Evans, Dennis Hopper, Ryan O'Neal. She's been with her fifth husband, who is 32 years her junior, since 2000.

Here's a fun detail: in 2001, Collins starred in the TV movie These Old Broads (written by Carrie Fisher!), alongside Beatty's sister, Shirley MacLaine. I wonder what they talked about.

LESLIE CARON

Who did Warren cheat on Joan with? Well, we know at least one woman from this period. In 1961, he had a two-year affair with Leslie Caron, the French actress best known for Gigi. She was married at the time to the legendary British theatre director Peter Hall and had two kids with him (Hall later remarried and became the dad of Rebecca Hall.) When Leslie divorced Hall, Beatty was named as a co-respondent and was ordered by the London court to pay the costs of the case.