Annette Bening recalls her film debut in 'The Great Outdoors' with John Candy, Dan Aykroyd and a very real bear
Even though she didn't make it on the poster, “I was so excited to just have the job,” says the four-time Oscar nominee.
Annette Bening has been nominated for pretty much every major award there is — Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, BAFTAs, Golden Globes — and her filmography includes such critically adored entries as The Grifters (1990), American Beauty (1999) and The Kids Are All Right (2010).
But when it came to her big-screen debut in The Great Outdoors (released in theaters 35 years ago, on June 17, 1988), you’d never even know Bening was in the movie — and least from looking at the poster.
Despite having a key role in the Howard Deutch-directed, John Hughes-scripted comedy adventure, the theatrically trained Bening, fresh off a Tony nomination for the play Coastal Disturbances, was an afterthought in the marketing, which positioned the film as a two-hander featuring famed funnymen Dan Aykroyd and John Candy. But she was fine with that.
“I was so excited to just have the job,” Bening, now 65, told us in a Role Recall interview (watch below). “It was my first film, getting paid what is [Screen Actors Guild] minimum was more money than I’d ever made. It was so exciting.”
Bening played Katie Craig, the pretentious wife of Aykroyd’s skeevy banker Roman as their family of four crashes the Wisconsin lakeside getaway of Candy’s Chet Ripley so Roman can trick Chet into making an ill-advised investment.
“We had to shoot on the other side of the lake from where we lived,” Bening says. “So we lived in these little cabins and then we would shoot. So we would have to get up very early in order to get to the set. But I remember thinking that was just so exciting. How fun to get up at 4:45!”
“Now I don’t think I would feel that way,” she adds laughing. “You know what I mean? But I remember that feeling.”
Bening also remembers having a live grizzly on set, as the so-called “Bald-Headed Bear” crashes through the families’ cabin in one particularly memorable sequence.
The actress reveals one of the film's camera operators had worked with the same bear on the 1972 Robert Redford picture Jeremiah Johnson, and offered advice that would last a lifetime.
“What they say is, ‘If the bear runs, don’t run. Just freeze.’ You’re not supposed to run,” Bening explains.
“And he said when he was on the set of [Jeremiah Johnson], that bear took off. And he said the first person to run was the trainer.”
