Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attractionis a 1987 Americanpsychological thriller filmdirected byAdrian Lyneand written byJames Dearden, based on his 1980 short filmDiversion. It follows Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), an attorney who cheats on his wife Beth (Anne Archer) with a colleague, Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). When Dan decides to end the affair, Alex grows increasingly unstable and begins stalking him and his family.
Fatal Attractionwas released in the United States on September 18, 1987. It grossed $320 million on a $14 million production budget, becoming thesecond highest-grossing film of the year in the United States. It received acclaim, with particular praise for its direction, editing, screenplay, and performances. It received six nominations at the60th Academy Awards, includingBest Picture,Best Directorfor Lyne,Best Actressfor Close, andBest Supporting Actressfor Archer. Considered apop culturephenomenon in the years since its release, the film is also credited for triggering theerotic thriller boom of the late 1980s to the mid 1990s.
Aplay based on the filmopened in London'sWest Endat theTheatre Royal Haymarketin 2014. In 2023, atelevision adaptationwas broadcast onParamount+.
Dan Gallagher is an attorney fromManhattan. While his wife, Beth, and daughter, Ellen, are out of town visiting Beth's family, he has an affair with Alex Forrest, an editor for a publishing company. Alex begins to cling to him. Dan reluctantly spends the following day with Alex. When he tries to leave, she cuts her wrists. Dan helps her and leaves in the morning.
Alex comes to Dan's office to apologize. He declines her invitation to a performance ofMadame Butterfly. She continues to call him at his office until he informs his secretary that he will no longer take her calls. Alex insists that Dan meet her and tells him she is pregnant, arguing that he must take responsibility. After Dan changes their phone number, Alex meets Beth, who has advertised selling their apartment, pretending to be interested in buying it. That night, Dan goes to Alex's apartment to confront her and they get into a scuffle.
Dan, Beth and Ellen move toBedford. She has a tape recording of herself delivered to him, which is full of verbal abuse. She stalks him, pours acid onto his car and follows him home later that evening. The sight of his happy family through their window makes her vomit. Dan approaches the police to file arestraining order, claiming it is for a client. The lieutenant informs him that he cannot violate Alex's rights withoutprobable cause, and that the client must own up to his adultery.
When Dan, Beth and Ellen return home, they discover Alex has boiled Ellen's pet rabbit on their stove. Dan confesses the affair and Alex's pregnancy to Beth. Enraged, Beth orders him to leave. Dan calls Alex to say Beth knows about the affair. Beth takes the phone and tells Alex that she will kill her if Alex comes near their family again. Alex picks Ellen up from her school and kidnaps her, taking her to an amusement park. Beth drives around frantically looking for her and gets into an accident, requiring hospitalization. Alex returns Ellen home unharmed.
After visiting Beth in the hospital, Dan forcibly enters Alex's apartment and attempts to strangle her, but stops short of killing her. She grabs a kitchen knife and lunges at him, but he disarms her and leaves. The police search for Alex after Dan reports the kidnapping. Beth forgives Dan, and they return home after Beth is discharged from the hospital. While Beth prepares to take a bath, Alex attacks her with a knife. Dan rushes upstairs, subdues Alex and appears to drown her in the bathtub, but she emerges swinging the knife. Beth shoots her dead. Dan completes his statement to the police and joins Beth in the living room.
The film was adapted byJames Dearden(with assistance fromNicholas Meyer)from Dearden's 1980 short filmDiversion. In Meyer's bookThe View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood, he explains that in late 1986 producerStanley R. Jaffeasked him to look at the script developed by Dearden, and he wrote a four-page memo making suggestions, including a new ending.John Carpenterwas approached to direct the film, but turned it down as he felt it was too similar toPlay Misty for Me(1971).A few weeks later Meyer met with the directorAdrian Lyneand gave him some additional suggestions. Meyer was asked to redraft the script to create the shooting script.
ProducersSherry Lansingand Stanley R. Jaffe both had serious doubts about casting Glenn Close because they did not think she could be sexual enough. Instead, they had many other actresses in mind.Barbara Hersheywas originally considered; she wanted the role but she was unavailable.Several actresses auditioned for the part, but they were almost all turned down.Lyne had French actressIsabelle Adjaniin mind for the role.Tracey Ullmanwas approached for the role, but she declined due to a scene in the script where the character boils a bunny.Miranda Richardsonalso turned it down as she found it "hideous."Ellen Barkin,Debra Winger,Susan Sarandon,Jessica Lange,Judy Davis,Melanie GriffithandMichelle Pfeifferwere also considered for the role.Kirstie Alleyauditioned for the role.Close was persistent, and after meeting with Jaffe several times in New York, she was asked to fly out to Los Angeles to read with Michael Douglas in front of Adrian Lyne and Lansing. Before the audition, she let her naturally frizzy hair "go wild" because she was impatient at putting it up, and she wore a slimming black dress she thought made her look "fabulous" to the audition.This impressed Lansing, because Close "came in looking completely different... right away she was into the part."Close and Douglas performed a scene from early in the script, where Alex flirts with Dan in a café, and Close came away "convinced my career was over, that I was finished, I had completely blown my chances".Lansing and Lyne were both convinced she was right for the role; Lyne stated that "an extraordinary erotic transformation took place. She was this tragic, bewildering mix of sexuality and rage—I watched Alex come to life."
To prepare for her role, Close consulted several psychologists, hoping to understand Alex's psyche and motivations. She was uncomfortable with the bunny boiling scene, which she thought was too extreme, but she was assured on consulting the psychologists that such an action was entirely possible and that Alex's behavior corresponded to someone who had experienced incestual sexual abuse as a child.While filming her death scene, Close suffered a concussion and was hospitalized. She later found out that she was pregnant during filming.
Alex was originally scripted slashing her throat at the film's end with the knife Dan had left on the counter, so as to make it appear that Dan had murdered her. After seeing her husband being taken away by police, Beth finds a revealing cassette tape that Alex sent Dan in which she threatens to kill herself. Beth takes the tape to the police, who clear Dan of the murder. The last scene shows, in flashback, Alex taking her own life by slashing her throat while listening toMadame Butterfly.
When the film was test-screened for audiences, the ending was poorly received as audiences disliked the idea of Alex triumphing in the end. After doing test screenings, Joseph Farrell (who handled the test screenings) suggested that Paramount shoot a new ending. While Douglas approved of changing the ending as he believed it was "best for the film", most of the cast and crew disliked the idea. Archer was "appalled" by the change and burst into tears when she heard the news. Close had doubts, believing Alex would "self-destruct and commit suicide".Lyne initially refused to change the ending until Lansing offered him an additional $1.5 million salary, while Dearden reluctantly agreed to write the new ending believing the film would be a bigger hit if changed.
Close fought against the change for two weeks before eventually giving in on her concerns and filming the new sequence afterWilliam Hurtconvinced her to do it.Though the ending was not the one she preferred, she acknowledged that the film would not have been as successful without it, because it gave the audience "a sense of catharsis, a hope, that somehow the family unit would survive the nightmare".
While Lyne has stood by the theatrical ending believing it was a "good idea", Dearden and Close have continued to express their dismay.In 2010, during a cast reunion interview, Close shared that she "never thought of [her character] as a villain"and said: "I wasn't playing a generality. I wasn't playing a cliché. I was playing a very specific, deeply disturbed, fragile human being, whom I had grown to love."Close also stated that she doesn't think the film would have been a hit without the "new" ending.In 2014, Dearden penned a piece forThe Guardianstating that while he does not regret writing the story, he does express his regret for the theatrical ending believing it to be sexist and the way Alex was portrayed in it stating that he didn't want to make her a monster but rather "a sad, tragic, lonely woman, holding down a tough job in an unforgiving city." When adapting his script tothe stage, he opted to lean away from making her a villain and more a tragic figure.
The film's first Japanese release used the original ending. The original ending also appeared on a special editionVHSandLaserDiscrelease byParamountin 1992, and was included on the film's DVD release a decade later.
A Special Collector's Edition of the film was released on DVD in 2002.Paramount releasedFatal AttractiononBlu-ray Discon June 9, 2009.The Blu-ray contained several bonus features from the 2002 DVD, including commentary by director Adrian Lyne, cast and crew interviews, a look at the film's cultural phenomenon, a behind-the-scenes look, rehearsal footage, the alternative ending, and the original theatrical trailer. In April 2020 a remastered Blu-ray Disc was released byParamount Home Entertainmentunder their Paramount Presents series. Included was a new interview with the director titled Filmmaker Focus, previous rehearsal footage but excluding some of the extra features from previous releases.Paramount released the film on 4KUltra HD Blu-rayin the U.S. on September 13, 2022.
Fatal Attractiongrossed $156.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $163.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $320.1 million.
The film spent eight weeks atnumber one in the United States, where it was the second-highest-grossing film of 1987, behindThree Men and a Baby.In the United Kingdom, it grossed a record £2,048,421 in its opening week and spent ten weeks atnumber one.In Australia, it was the first non-Australian film to gross A$2 million in its opening week, second toCrocodile Dundee.Fatal Attractioneventually became the highest-grossing film worldwide in 1987.
Fatal Attractionreceived 6 nominations at the60th Academy Awards, includingBest Picture,Best Director(for Lyne),Best Actress(Close) andBest Supporting Actress(Archer), but failed to win any. At the42nd British Academy Film Awards, the film wonBest Editing, while earning nominations forBest Actor in a Leading Role(Douglas) andBest Actress in a Supporting Role(Archer). It also received four nominations at the45th Golden Globe Awards, includingBest Motion Picture – Drama,Best Director(Lyne),Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama(Close) andBest Supporting Actress – Motion Picture(Archer).
On thereview aggregatorwebsiteRotten Tomatoes, 74% of 61 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "A potboiler in the finest sense,Fatal Attractionis a sultry, juicy thriller that's hard to look away from once it gets going."Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.Audiences polled byCinemaScoregave the film an average grade of "A" on an F to A+ scale.
Janet MaslinofThe New York Timeslauded Lyne's direction, writing that he "takes a brilliantly manipulative approach to what might have been a humdrum subject and shapes a soap opera of exceptional power. Most of that power comes directly fromvisual imagery, for Mr. Lyne is well versed in making anything – a person, a room, a pile of dishes in a kitchen sink – seem tactile, rich and sexy."Richard SchickelofTimestated that Close and Douglas "gives the film some of its fatal attractiveness. So do James Dearden's plausible, nicely observant script, Adrian Lyne's elegantly unforced direction, and Close's beautifully calibrated descent into lunacy. Together they bring horror home to a place where the grownup moviegoer actually lives."
AuthorSusan Faludidiscussed the film inBacklash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, arguing that major changes had been made to the original plot in order to make Alex wholly negative, while Dan's carelessness and the lack of compassion and responsibility raised no discussion, except for a small number of men's groups who said that Dan was eventually forced to own up to his irresponsibility in that "everyone pays the piper".Close was quoted in 2008 as saying, "Men still come up to me and say, 'You scared the shit out of me.' Sometimes they say, 'You saved my marriage.'"CriticBarry Normanexpressed sympathy for feminists who were frustrated by the film, criticized its "over-the-top" ending and called it inferior toClint Eastwood'sPlay Misty for Me, which has a similar plot. Nonetheless, he declared it "strong and very well made, excellently played by the three main characters and neatly written."Fatal Attractionhas been described as aneo-noirfilm by some authors.
Fatal Attractionwas the first American film to be distributed byUnited International Picturesin South Korea. In September 1988, Korean film distributors protested this release by "releasing snakes, setting fire in the theatres, and tearing off the screens."
Psychiatrists and film experts have analyzed the character of Alex Forrest and used her as an illustration ofborderline personality disorder.She exhibits impulsive behavior, emotional instability, a fear of abandonment, frequent episodes of intense anger,self-harming, and shifting betweenidealization and devaluationof others, all of which are characteristic of the disorder. The degree to which she displays these traits is not necessarily typical, and aggression in people with borderline personality disorder is often directed toward themselves rather than others.
As referenced in Orit Kamir'sEvery Breath You Take: Stalking Narratives and the Law, "Glenn Close's character Alex is quite deliberately made to be anerotomaniac." Gelder reports that Close "consulted three separate shrinks for an inner profile of her character, who is meant to be suffering from a form of an obsessive condition known asde Clérambault's syndrome" (Gelder 1990, 93–94).The term "bunny boiler" is used to describe an obsessive, spurned woman, deriving from the scene where it is discovered that Alex has boiled the family's pet rabbit.
American Film Instituterecognition
Aplay based on the filmopened in London'sWest Endat theTheatre Royal Haymarketin March 2014.It was adapted by the film's original screenwriterJames Dearden.
On July 2, 2015,Foxannounced that a TV series based on the film was being developed byMad MenwritersMariaandAndre Jacquemetton.On January 13, 2017, it was announced that the project was canceled.On February 24, 2021, it was announced thatParamount+planned toreboot the film as a seriesfor their platform. It was byAlexandra Cunninghamand Kevin J. Hynes and produced by Cunningham, Hynes, Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank ofAmblin Entertainment,Stanley Jaffe, andSherry Lansing.On November 11,Lizzy Caplanwas announced to play Alex Forrest in the new series andJoshua Jacksonjoined in January 2022 as Dan Gallagher.