Multi-Oscar nominated Annette Bening is currently filming one of those true love stories that could have only have happened in Hollywood, although this one actually played out in Liverpool in the UK. Bening is playing the Oscar winning Gloria Grahame (The Bad & The Beautiful) who in 1978 at the age of 54 was playing Sadie Thompson in ‘Rain’ on the stage in London’e West End. Whilst there Grahame, who had been married four times, had a rather tumultuous affair with Peter Turner a young British actor who was half her age.
Even though the affair faded, three years later when Grahame was seriously ill and dying it was Turner who took the Hollywood legend in and they stayed in his mother’s working class home in Liverpool until eventually two of her children took her back to California where she died.
Bening is joined in this highly anticipated biopic by Jaime Bell (who plays Turner) and the cast includes Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Walters, Kenneth Cranham, Stephen Graham, Frances Barber and Leanne Best. With a script adapted from Turner’s 1986 memoir of the same name by Matt Greenhalgh, and directed by Paul McGuigan, and produced by Barbara Broccoli, the film is set to be released in 2017
