Most Beautiful 2009

ANNETTE BENING, 50

For Bening, the decision to get into acting was never a conscious choice. "I felt like it was just there, like a heartbeat was there," she told CBS's 60 Minutes back in 2005. "It's just so much a part of me. Once I got interested, that was it." And the career that seems to have chosen her has certainly paid off. In addition to three Oscar nominations – The Grifters in 1990, American Beauty in 1999 and Being Julia in 2004 – this California girl even managed to turn notorious playboy Warren Beatty into a one-woman man since 1992.