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Henry Warren Beatty (born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director.
Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia's, Bellevue neighborhood. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Nova Scotia–born drama teacher, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, a public school administrator, and a real estate agent. Beatty's grandparents were also teachers. The family was Baptist. His father moved the family from Richmond to Norfolk, Virginia, and then to Arlington, Virginia, where he became a middle school principal. The family also lived in Waverly, Virginia, in the 1930s. Beatty's sister, three years his senior, is the multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine.
Beatty was a star football player at Washington-Lee High School, in Arlington, Virginia. Encouraged to act by the success of his sister, who had recently established herself as a Hollywood star, he decided to work as a stagehand at the National Theater in Washington, D.C., during the summer prior to his senior year. This enabled him to establish contact with a few famous actors. Upon graduation from high school, he turned down 10 football scholarships to enroll in drama school.