IT MAY not be one of the great remaining mysteries, on a par with the nature of dark matter or the origins of the universe, but the question of how many women Warren Beatty has slept with certainly seems to have got New York’s media-land in a froth.
Beatty's new biographer, Peter Biskind, estimates that the famously seductive star of Bonnie and Clydeand Redshas notched up 12,775 sexual conquests, including Isabelle Adjani, Diane Keaton and Madonna.
That’s an impressive number. Even Don Giovanni could only claim a lacklustre 2,065, according to Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte.
Biskind writes in his book Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, that he arrived at the figure by "simple arithmetic". He appears to have worked out the number of days between Beatty losing his virginity at 19 and the date in 1991 when he met Annette Bening on the set of Bugsyand fell into monogamy, and then applied the admittedly questionable logic that during that entire period Beatty slept with an average of one woman a day. Biskind, an accomplished writer on Hollywood and author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, adds that for these purposes he ruled out "daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on".
The exercise may not gain Biskind honorary membership of the American Academy of Arts Sciences, but it has generated considerable publicity. An account in the New York Post, headlined 'Sexy tell-all jumps into Beatty's bed', bills the book as an authorised biography. However, even its publisher, Simon Schuster, makes no reference to Beatty having co-operated with the author. And Beatty's lawyer, Bertram Fields, told the Huffington Postthat Biskind's "tedious and boring book on Mr Beatty was not authorised by Mr Beatty". He accused Biskind of writing "many false assertions" and quoting Beatty "as saying things he never said".
– (Guardian service)