All of this is contrasted with Oliver's own sweet romance with the nymphish Anna. A tenderly forlorn Ewan McGregor plays the Mills stand-in, Oliver, who is dealing with his father's recent passing and haunted by childhood memories of his parents' strained relationship and his father's joyful life as a septuagenarian gay man. Many people will know director Mike Mills from last year's 20th Century Women, which featured a downright incandescent Annette Bening who was robbed of an Oscar nomination (though that's neither here nor there), however you may be unaware that that was a follow-up to Beginners, the semi-autobiographical story of his father's late-in-life coming out and subsequent blossoming.