Man out of time: Warren Beatty’s fall from favour

As the BFI prepares to screen ‘Dick Tracy’ next month, Geoffrey Macnab reveals how blown budgets, Oscar gaffes and recent allegations about his sex life have cast Tinseltown’s ultimate Lothario Warren Beatty and his films in a very different light

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) (Snap/Shutterstock)

These haven’t been comfortable years for Warren Beatty, the 86-year-old who once seemed like Hollywood’s golden boy. His most recent feature, Rules Don’t Apply (2016), a lighthearted drama that he directed and starred in as the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, was a disaster at the box office and received stinking reviews. Beatty ended up being sued by his own producer for overspending on the marketing. The “wrong envelope” embarrassment still lingers from the Oscars night gaffe in 2017, when he and Faye Dunaway somehow gave La La Land the Best Picture award that should have gone to Moonlight.

The actor’s reputation as Tinseltown’s ultimate Lothario has also taken a knocking. In a new biography of Jackie Kennedy by J Randy Taraborrelli, the former first lady who allegedly had an affair with Beatty in the mid 1970s is quoted as saying of his amorous skills, “Oh, he’s fine. Men can only do so much anyway.” Another former lover, British star Joan Collins, who almost married Beatty at the start of his career, recently described him as a “total bore” in bed.

Woody Allen’s famous old quip, “If there is reincarnation, I’d like to come back as Warren Beatty’s fingertips”, now seems more tawdry than funny. Last year, legal action was begun against Beatty by Kristina Charlotte Hirsch, a Louisiana-based woman now in her sixties, who alleged that when she was 14 or 15 years old, “defendant Doe” (reported to be Beatty) used “his position and status as an adult, and a Hollywood movie star, to coerce sexual contact with Plaintiff on multiple occasions, including oral sex, simulated sex and finally coerced sexual intercourse with the minor child”.