Book's Claim That Warren Beatty Bedded Thousands of Women Is 'Baloney': Lawyer

Jan. 5, 2010 — -- How much does Warren Beatty love the ladies?

We can count the ways, if a new unauthorized biography due out Jan. 12 is to be believed. In "Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America," author Peter Biskind contends that the actor, 72, has bedded nearly 13,000 women.

That's not a typo. According to Biskin, Beatty's been with 12,775 females, "give or take."

But according to Beatty's lawyer, that figure is a bunch of "baloney."

"It is absurd," attorney Bert Fields told ABCNews.com Monday. "Somebody must have made it up. It's just absurd."

Fields said that while Biskind interviewed Beatty for "Star," the author, a journalist who served as the executive editor of Premiere magazine and has written many prominent Hollywood tomes, including "Raging Bulls," "Down and Dirty Pictures," and "Gods and Monsters," never asked Beatty how many women the actor had bedded.

"Warren is quoted as saying things that he didn't say," Fields said. "I don't mean that all of the quotes are wrong, but there are things in there that he didn't say. It is not something that he read and approved."

Fair enough. But it brings up the bigger point of, well, how many women has Hollywood's legendary ladies man been with, anyway?

"I haven't counted them," Fields said, "but I can tell you it's not ... what ever that ridiculous number was. Warren had long relationships with different women. During those periods, he was loyal to that particular woman." (Beatty has been married to actress Annette Bening since 1992; they have four children.)

So does Beatty himself even know what his "number" is?

"I don't think he knows," Fields said. "I mean, who keeps count of those things?"

A publicist for Simon & Schuster, the publishing house behind Biskind's book, told ABCNews.com that the company "stands by" the author despite Fields' denial of his claims. Biskind himself was not available for comment Monday.

Top Five Shocking Excerpts From Peter Biskind's 'Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America'

On to the juicy details. Beyond the five-digit figure -- which, according to ABCNews.com's calculations, would roughly work out to one woman a day over the span of 35 years -- Biskind contends that Beatty is into all sorts of kinky things. The author paints the star as a sexual pioneer; a lady lover who, at the height of his lothario career, knew no bounds.

Below, five choice excerpts from "Star." Please note: explicit content follows.

"How many women were there? Easier to count the stars in the sky. But devotees of the Guinness Book of Records want to know. Beatty used to say that he couldn't get to sleep at night without having sex. It was part of his routine, like flossing. This was who he was. As the evening progressed, he would disappear with his little black book, looking for a phone. Simple arithmetic tells us that if he had no more than one partner a night—and often there were several—over a period of, say, three and a half decades, from the mid-1950s, when he arrived in New York, to 1991, when he met Annette Bening, and allowing for the stretches when he was with the same woman, more or less, we can arrive at a figure of 12,775 women, give or take ... "

"There was nothing particularly outre about Beatty's sexual practices. ... He was not adverse to spanking, in which he played the spanker, not the spankee but he did not appear to be much interested in exploring the exotic of, say, the 'Kama Sutra.'"

"Doubles and triples, i.e. more than one woman at a time, were de rigueur in those days, although some women weren't thrilled by the idea."

"According to another woman with whom he had a lengthy relationship, Beatty liked to watch two women make love, and 'then have sex with each one of them.'"

"Of course, Beatty was into phone sex before there was phone sex. He would call a woman in the middle of the night, asking softly, in his silky voice, 'What's new, pussycat,' or using another of his favorite openers. Then came the questions: 'Where are you?' 'What are you doing?' 'What are you wearing?'"