Being Julia is a drama film directed by Istvan Szabo. It was released in 2004 and was nominated in 2005 for an Oscar for "Best Leading Actress." The screenplay, based on the book Theatre, by W. Somerset Maugham was written by Ronald Harwood. Being Julia stars Annette Bening as Julia and Jeremy Irons as Michael Gosselyn.

Being Julia is set in London in the 1930's. Annette Bening as Julia Lambert, is an actress who faces her biggest fear, getting older, and realizes her best years as an actress are nearly over. She is exhausted, depressed, and bored with her life. She is married to her business manager, played by Jeremy Irons, but it is a relationship without love or passion. Julia starts an affair with a young, attentive man and falls in love with him. She is challenged both on and offstage by younger actress Avice Crichton.

• Michael Gambon - Jimmie Langton

• Annette Bening - Julia Lambert

• Leigh Lawson - Archie Dexter

• Shaun Evans - Tom Fennel

• Jeremy Irons - Michael Gosselyn

"A flimsy frame surrounding a brightly colored performance by Annette Bening, whose quick, high-spirited charm is on marvelous display...She gives Being Julia a giddy, reckless effervescence that neither Mr. Szabo's stolid direction nor Ronald Harwood's lurching script...are quite able to match."—A.O. Scott, The New York Times

"There are several notable actors in it, most of them quite good, but it's the glorious Annette Bening who hoists this flawed production on her mink-wrapped shoulders and makes it work . . . Her stage background at American Conservatory Theater shows in her multilayered tour de force."—Carla Meyer, The San Francisco Chronicle

"Annette Bening can act - watch American Beauty or Bugsy or The Grifters - but she works too hard to prove it in Being Julia"—Rolling Stone, Peter Travers