Backdrop fallback

American Beauty

American Beauty

Share

American Beauty

"... look closer"

1999

2h 2m

8.0(13208 votes)

Drama

Overview

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.

Where to Watch

Buy

Apple TV Store

Google Play Movies

YouTube

Rent

Apple TV Store

Google Play Movies

YouTube

Amazon Video

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

DreamWorks Pictures

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Kevin Spacey

Kevin Spacey

Lester Burnham

Annette Bening

Annette Bening

Carolyn Burnham

Thora Birch

Thora Birch

Jane Burnham

Wes Bentley

Wes Bentley

Ricky Fitts

Mena Suvari

Mena Suvari

Angela Hayes

Peter Gallagher

Peter Gallagher

Buddy Kane

Allison Janney

Allison Janney

Barbara Fitts

Chris Cooper

Chris Cooper

Colonel Fitts

Scott Bakula

Scott Bakula

Jim Olmeyer

Sam Robards

Sam Robards

Jim Berkley

Creative team

Directed by: Sam Mendes
Written by: Alan Ball
Produced by: Bruce Cohen
Dan Jinks

Similar Movies

Why Harper

Why Harper

Harper wants to know why her relationships keep failing. In an attempt to understand, she enlists two of her exes to help her look at their past through an anthropological lens.

Adam's Apples

Adam's Apples

A neo-nazi sentenced to community service at a church clashes with the blindly devotional priest.

Breathless

Breathless

Jesse, a small-time criminal, high-tails it to Los Angeles to rendezvous with a French exchange student. Stealing a car and accidentally killing a highway patrolman, he becomes the most wanted fugitive in L.A.

Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls

A trio of female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s, facing their own personal struggles along the way.

Babel

Babel

Tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, which jumpstarts an interlocking story involving four different families.

The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.

Lonely Hearts

Lonely Hearts

In the late 1940s, a murderous couple known as the 'The Lonely Hearts Killers' kills close to a dozen people. Two detectives try to nab the duo who find their targets via the personals in the paper.

Don't Worry, I'm Fine

Don't Worry, I'm Fine

A 19-year-old searches for her twin brother after he runs away from home, following a fight with their father.

Notes on a Scandal

Notes on a Scandal

A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.

The Dreamers

The Dreamers

When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.

Y Tu Mamá También

Y Tu Mamá También

In Mexico, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life, friendship, sex, and each other.

sex, lies, and videotape

sex, lies, and videotape

Ann, a frustrated wife, enters into counseling due to a troubled marriage. Unbeknownst to her, her husband John has begun an affair with her sister. When John’s best friend Graham arrives, his penchant for interviewing women about their sex lives forever changes John and Ann’s rocky marriage.

Lovers of the Arctic Circle

Lovers of the Arctic Circle

As young children, Otto and Ana become best friends, leading to the marriage of Ana's mother to Otto's father. When Otto and Ana become teenagers, they begin a sexual relationship, which they hide from their parents. The two fall deeply in love and seem destined to spend the rest of their lives together. However, their relationship is tested when Otto's mother dies and the two are separated.

No Songs of Love

No Songs of Love

As Tobias, a young director, supposes that his girl-friend Ellen had an affair with his brother Markus, front man of "Hansen", one year ago, he decides to shoot a documentary about the band's next tour. When Ellen joins the project, everybody's emotions boil over, although they are observed all the time.

Thelma & Louise

Thelma & Louise

Taking a break from their dreary lives, close friends Thelma and Louise embark on a short weekend trip that ends in unforeseen incriminating circumstances. As fugitives, both women rediscover the strength of their bond and their newfound resilience.

Thumbsucker

Thumbsucker

Justin Cobb, a teenager in suburban Oregon, copes with his thumb-sucking problem, romance, and his diagnosis with ADHD and subsequent experience using Ritalin.

Pieces of April

Pieces of April

Quirky and rebellious April Burns lives with her boyfriend in a low-rent New York City apartment miles away from her emotionally distant family. But when she discovers that her mother has a fatal form of breast cancer, she invites the clan to her place for Thanksgiving. While her father struggles to drive her family into the city, April -- an inexperienced cook -- runs into kitchen trouble and must ask a neighbor for help.

Parenthood

Parenthood

The story of the Buckman family and friends, attempting to bring up their children. They suffer/enjoy all the events that occur: estranged relatives, the 'black sheep' of the family, the eccentrics, the skeletons in the closet, and the rebellious teenagers.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.

Funeral Parade of Roses

Funeral Parade of Roses

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.

Recommended Movies

Faces

Faces

Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. As Richard takes up with a younger woman, Maria enjoys a night on the town with her friends and meets a younger man. As the couple and those around them confront a seemingly futile search for what they've lost -- love, excitement, passion -- this classic American independent film explores themes of aging and alienation.

From Straight A's to XXX

From Straight A's to XXX

When a change of circumstances leaves Miriam unable to pay her college tuition, she makes a surprising decision: to start performing in adult films, using the pseudonym Belle Knox. Miriam lies to her family and her friends at school, keeping her double life a secret. But soon rumours spread and Miriam becomes the subject of vicious online attacks and unwanted attention. Miriam fights back: she talks to the media, saying her new line of work empowers her as a feminist. But her confident stand has unintended consequences. Miriam is shunned by her conservative family and her colleagues in the adult film world. One impulsive decision has quickly spiralled out of control - and Miriam's problems are just beginning.

Addicted

Addicted

A gallerist risks her family and flourishing career when she enters into an affair with a talented painter and slowly loses control of her life.

Careful What You Wish For

Careful What You Wish For

A guy gets more than he bargained for after entering into an affair with the wife of an investment banker. Soon, a suspicious death and substantial life insurance policy embroil him in a scandal.

Lolita

Lolita

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

The Ledge

The Ledge

A thriller in which a battle of philosophies between a fundamentalist Christian and an atheist who shares an apartment with a gay friend escalates into a lethal battle of wills.

May December

May December

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.

Mammal

Mammal

After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.

Lolita

Lolita

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

Deep Water

Deep Water

A well-to-do husband who allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance of her lovers.

Effie Gray

Effie Gray

A look at the mysterious relationship between Victorian art critic John Ruskin and his teenage bride Effie Gray.

Magnolia

Magnolia

On one random day in the San Fernando Valley, a dying father, a young wife, a male caretaker, a famous lost son, a police officer in love, a boy genius, an ex-boy genius, a game show host and an estranged daughter will each become part of a dazzling multiplicity of plots, but one story.

Nocturnal Animals

Nocturnal Animals

Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.

Dream Lover

Dream Lover

Not long after they cross paths at an art gallery, architect Ray Reardon and hypnotically sensual Lena are married with children. But as strange incidents occur, Ray begins to realize he may not really know the woman he married.

Adulterers

Adulterers

On a steamy New Orleans afternoon, Sam Deuprey decides to surprise his beautiful wife, Ashley, for their anniversary and comes home early. But Ashley is not alone in the bedroom. She and her lover, Damien are about to learn how far a jealous husband will go.

The Only Living Boy in New York

The Only Living Boy in New York

When a young man learns that his overbearing father is having an affair, he tries to stop it, only to be seduced by the older woman as well.

Crash

Crash

A car crash victim inexplicably finds himself aroused by car accidents and becomes involved with an underground subculture of like-minded souls.

The Crush

The Crush

A precocious and obsessive teenager develops a crush on a naive writer with harrowing consequences.

Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley

An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.

Heatwave

Heatwave

A woman's life takes an unexpected turn when she falls for her boss's wife. She must soon defend herself as she becomes entangled in a web of malice.