The 79-year-old star has made his return to Hollywood with his new movie Rules Don’t Apply, which stars Lily James as a young actress who embarks on a forbidden relationship with her driver.
Beatty plays Hollywood bigwig Howard Hughes in the movie, and revealed he had been working on the project for more than 20 years – his first writing and directing effort since 1998 political satire Bulworth.
“I’ve been working on this movie for a long time,” he said at Deadline’s The Contenders event on Saturday (05Nov16). “I’ve been lucky enough to not have to do movie after movie, to have something in mind but not make concrete plans about doing it, until finally I just do it.”
And the veteran actor and director had an unusual analogy to describe the film-making process. “I compare making a movie to vomiting,” Beatty explained. “I don’t like to vomit. It builds up and it builds up until something happens and I think, ‘Maybe I’ll just feel better if I throw up.’ And that’s how I make a movie.”
Despite starring as billionaire filmmaker and businessman Hughes, Beatty was quick to point out his movie is no biopic.
“It’s about sex and romance in old Hollywood,” he said. “About the comical and sometimes sad consequences of what we have to call American sexual Puritanism, which often has made us the laughing stock of France and other countries.
“The subject comes up in such an unnecessary way. It’s ludicrous that we spend so much time in denial of things that have to do with love… It’s a big subject that has always been an obsession in American morality. So I think it’s important to get a laugh out of it.
Rules Don’t Apply is slated for release on 23 November (16).