Oh, Oh, Annette

A powerhouse pixie, Annette Bening supplies the pop in Mike Nichols's Postcards from the Edge as the bit actress who sets Meryl Streep straight. "I was dazzled by Meryl," admits the Greenwich Village actress, who claims, ''I have to refind my courage every time I work." The sweat doesn't show—her acting has an icecube ping, her big baby blues swimming with amused wonder. She's on a busy track, co-starring with Robert De Niro as a stalwart soul in Guilty by Suspicion, a McCarthy-era drama, and shaking her tail feathers as a sex cocktail in Stephen Frears's The Grifters (about her nude scenes, "the less I say, the better"). Then she comes full circle with Regarding Henry. Like Postcards, it concerns recovery, as Harrison Ford's Henry realizes in rehab "what a jerk he was." Playing his nurturing wife, Bening gently leads him by the hand out of jerkdom. Us, she has in her palm. JAMES WOLCOTT