62 Fun Facts About American Beauty

Which film from the same studio followed American Beauty as the next Best Picture winner?

Gladiator won Best Picture a year later and A Beautiful Mind the year after that, giving the studio three winners in a row starting with American Beauty.

Who plays Lester Burnham?

Kevin Spacey plays Lester; the director asked him for a Walter Matthau impersonation in the slouching early scenes, and he changed his posture as the character got fit.

Who plays Carolyn Burnham, Lester's status-obsessed wife?

Annette Bening earned a Best Actress nomination as Carolyn; before takes she shut out the set with music the director had given her as Carolyn's kind.

Which theater director made his feature-film debut with American Beauty?

Sam Mendes ran London's Donmar Warehouse theatre; he so disliked his first three days of footage that the studio let him reshoot them, and he went on to win Best Director.

Who wrote the screenplay for American Beauty?

Alan Ball wrote it on spec after years on sitcom staffs, pouring his frustration with that work into the script; it won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Who plays Angela, the cheerleader Lester becomes infatuated with?

Mena Suvari got the part after Kirsten Dunst turned it down; Dunst, 15 when she read the script, said she was not mature enough for its material.

Who plays Jane Burnham?

Thora Birch plays Jane, whose videotaped request that Ricky kill her father opens the film; when the scene returns in full, she tells him she is not serious.

Who plays Ricky Fitts, the camcorder-carrying neighbor?

Wes Bentley played Ricky Fitts in his breakout role; the director handed him a video camera before shooting and told him to film whatever Ricky would.

Who plays Colonel Fitts, the retired Marine next door?

Chris Cooper played the colonel; after the script sold, the writer cut a wartime flashback for the character, leaving his past to be read between the lines.

What dream car does Lester buy?

A 1970 Pontiac Firebird, 'the car I've always wanted', is what Lester buys; the argument over it turns into the one moment he nearly seduces Carolyn.

What recurring image fills Lester's fantasies about Angela?

Red rose petals fill Lester's fantasies about Angela; most were added by computer after filming, and the title itself names a variety of rose.

What does Ricky call the most beautiful thing he has ever filmed?

A plastic bag blowing in the wind is the footage Ricky shows Jane; the scene came from the writer's own encounter with a bag that circled him in the street years earlier.

How does Ricky pay for his video equipment?

Dealing marijuana pays for Ricky's gear; his catering job is only a front, which is why his father misreads the garage scene so badly.

What job does Lester take after quitting his advertising career?

Fry cook at a fast-food restaurant is the job he picks, at Mr. Smiley's, insisting on the least responsibility possible; it is at the drive-through window that he catches Carolyn with her lover.

Carolyn has an affair with a rival in which profession?

Real estate is Carolyn's own trade, and rival agent Buddy Kane, the self-styled 'King', ends the affair the moment he starts worrying about the cost of a divorce.

Who plays Buddy Kane?

Peter Gallagher played Buddy Kane, the 'King' whose motto is to 'project an image of success at all times'; Carolyn throws the line back at him when he ends the affair.

Who plays Barbara Fitts, Ricky's near-silent mother?

Allison Janney played Barbara Fitts, so withdrawn that she apologizes to a visitor for the state of a spotless house; Janney joined The West Wing the same year.

Who is implied to have shot Lester?

Frank Fitts is the implied killer: after Lester rebuffs his kiss, the colonel is seen returning home blood-soaked and missing a gun from his collection.

What was American Beauty's two-word tagline?

Look closer is the tagline, and the film plants it on screen: the same two words are pinned up inside Lester's office cubicle.

Which studio made and released American Beauty?

DreamWorks outbid Fox Searchlight and October Films for the script in 1998; a year after its Saving Private Ryan lost Best Picture, the young studio had its first winner.

Which acting Oscar did American Beauty win among its five awards?

Best Actor went to its leading man; only a loss in the Best Actress race stopped the film sweeping the 'Big Five' of Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay.

American Beauty's cinematographer, Conrad L. Hall, won his first Oscar for which western?

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid won him the award thirty years before American Beauty did; while shooting it he met its leading lady, Katharine Ross, and the two married soon after.

Who composed American Beauty's percussion-heavy score?

Thomas Newman built the score on xylophones, marimbas, tablas and bongos because the director wanted music that 'hammered and thwacked a bit'.

Which rock classic does Lester belt out while driving after quitting his job?

American Woman topped the US chart in 1970, when Lester would have been about thirteen; he sings it at the wheel as he sets about reliving his youth.

Roughly what did American Beauty cost to make?

$15 million was the budget, about double what the studio first planned, and the film earned back more than twenty times that worldwide.

What does Ricky take from his father's locked cabinet to show Jane?

A piece of Nazi china, a platter marked with a swastika, is what he lifts out; when the colonel finds out Ricky has been in the cabinet, he beats him.

What does Lester demand from his boss for keeping quiet about a company scandal?

A year's salary with benefits is his price, and when his boss refuses he adds the threat of a harassment claim; he later tells his family he got almost sixty thousand dollars.

The tabloid frenzy around which early-1990s scandal helped inspire American Beauty?

Amy Fisher, the Long Island teenager who shot her older lover's wife in 1992, became a tabloid fixture; the writer said he sensed a truer, more tragic story under the coverage.

In what form did American Beauty's writer first try to tell the story, years before the film?

A stage play was the first attempt, in the early 1990s; the writer shelved it and said, eight years on, that he had been living with the characters ever since.

What is Lester looking at in the kitchen in the moment before he is shot?

A family photograph, taken years earlier at an amusement park, is in his hands; he has just told Angela he is 'great' and is smiling at how happy the three of them looked.

Which stage musical had American Beauty's director just revived on Broadway, impressing Steven Spielberg?

Cabaret, restaged in a converted nightclub in 1998, bowled Spielberg over; he invited its director to Los Angeles and handed him the script over lunch.

Which James Bond film did American Beauty's director go on to make in 2012?

Skyfall was his first Bond film; he turned down the follow-up to concentrate on theatre work, then returned to direct Spectre once the producers agreed to wait for him.

What does Carolyn say that ends Lester's attempt to seduce her?

You're going to spill beer on the couch is the line; Lester snaps that it is just a couch, and Carolyn answers that it is a $4,000 sofa upholstered in Italian silk.

Kirsten Dunst, who turned down the role of Angela, starred in which film that same year?

The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola's debut, cast Dunst as Lux Lisbon; she had declined Angela over the part's sexual content.

Director and star studied which actor's performance in The Apartment (1960) as a model for Lester?

Jack Lemmon's C.C. Baxter in The Apartment was the model: director and star wanted the way he moved in that office, an ordinary man who was nonetheless special.

Lester's narration from beyond the grave is a throwback to which 1950 film?

Sunset Boulevard, narrated by William Holden's dead screenwriter, was the model; the director felt the device captured the loneliness of both Lester and the film.

Which star, whose then-wife American Beauty's director was directing on stage, recommended its cinematographer?

Tom Cruise had produced Without Limits, shot by the same veteran, and passed the name on while the director was staging The Blue Room with Nicole Kidman.

Which show tune does Carolyn sing along to in her car?

"Don't Rain on My Parade", in Bobby Darin's version, is what she belts out on the drive home, for once simply enjoying herself, until she finds a strange car in the driveway.

Who covers Neil Young's 'Don't Let It Bring You Down' during Angela's seduction of Lester?

Annie Lennox's version is what Angela puts on the Burnhams' stereo herself; Lester hears it from the kitchen and follows the music to her.

Which band first recorded "Because", the song Elliott Smith covers over American Beauty's end credits?

The Beatles put it on Abbey Road in 1969; John Lennon said it began when he asked Yoko Ono to play the chords of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata backwards.

Which city does Ricky ask Jane to run away to with him after his father throws him out?

New York is where Ricky means to live, and Jane agrees at once; he tells her they will not need her savings, because he has over forty thousand dollars of his own.

Spying on the garage, what does Colonel Fitts wrongly conclude about Lester and Ricky?

That they are lovers is what the angle of the window suggests to him; the mistake leads him to beat Ricky and throw him out of the house.

What happened in the bookend scenes cut from American Beauty's first edit?

Jane and Ricky are tried for Lester's murder in the bookends as scripted and shot; the director cut them in editing, and the writer fought the change before coming round.

American Beauty's first cut opened with a dream in which Lester does what?

Flies above the town is what Lester does in a dream that was shot for the opening and then cut; the writer agreed the effect had come out looking cheap.

What stress cure does Buddy Kane recommend to Carolyn?

Firing a gun at a range is his tip, because nothing makes him feel more powerful; Carolyn is soon a regular, shouting 'I love shooting this gun!'

Why did MTV withdraw its Best Kiss nomination for Lester and Angela?

The studio refused to provide a clip, saying it did not want to glorify a kiss between a middle-aged man and a 16-year-old girl, so MTV dropped the nomination.

Which festival's audience-voted People's Choice Award did American Beauty win in September 1999?

Toronto audiences voted it the People's Choice Award, treated as the festival's top honor, in the week it reached its first cinemas; it went on to win Best Picture.

What does Ricky do in front of Lester that makes Lester call him his personal hero?

Quits his job on the spot: caught slacking by the catering boss, Ricky just says 'I quit', and Lester soon walks out of his own job in much the same spirit.

Which rental chain kept American Beauty behind its counters after failing to agree a deal with the studio?

Blockbuster Video suggested its managers keep the tapes behind the counter so customers had to ask, while staff read out a statement blaming the failed revenue-sharing talks.

What does Angela admit to Lester that makes him stop at the last moment?

That she is a virgin, for all her boasting, is what she admits: 'This is my first time.' Lester stops at once and comforts her instead.

What career does Angela say she really has a shot at?

Modeling is her plan: she tells Jane that strangers wanting her proves she has a shot at it, adding that nothing in life is worse than being ordinary.

What goal does Lester give his jogging neighbors when he asks them for fitness tips?

To look good naked is all he wants, he tells them; he has just overheard Angela say she would sleep with him if he built up his chest and arms.

Who won the 2000 Best Actress Oscar, beating American Beauty's Carolyn?

Hilary Swank won for Boys Don't Cry, and history repeated five years later: she beat the same actress again, with Million Dollar Baby over Being Julia.

What dish does Lester hurl against the wall in the dinner-table argument?

A plate of asparagus shatters against the wall when Carolyn talks over him; 'Don't interrupt me, honey,' Lester says, and calmly goes back to his dinner.

At the start of American Beauty, what does Lester point out that Carolyn's pruning shears match?

Her gardening clogs match the handles of the shears, and Lester assures us 'that's not an accident': it is his first sketch of a wife for whom appearances are everything.

What does Colonel Fitts make Ricky hand over every six months?

A urine sample for a drug test is the demand; Ricky keeps a clean one frozen in his room and thaws it overnight when his father comes asking.

What first name do American Beauty's happily dull gay neighbors share?

Jim is the name both neighbors share, 'Jim and Jim'; they are about the only contented couple on the street, and Lester turns to them for jogging tips.

What has Jane been saving her babysitting money for?

Cosmetic surgery is the plan, with almost three thousand dollars put by; in the video that opens the film she jokes about spending it on a hit man for her father instead.

The actress who plays Angela in American Beauty also appeared in which teen comedy the same year?

American Pie cast her as sweet-natured choir singer Heather, the opposite of Angela; it reached cinemas two months before American Beauty.

Which Miramax film, backed by a heavy Oscar campaign, lost Best Picture to American Beauty?

The Cider House Rules was Miramax's contender; a year after Saving Private Ryan lost to that studio, American Beauty's backers outspent it on trade ads and won.

At dinner, Lester says he is tired of music he likens to which bandleader's?

Lawrence Welk is his jibe at Carolyn's easy-listening dinner music; moments after hurling his plate at the wall, he rules that they will take turns choosing from now on.

At what kind of event does Lester first see Angela?

A high school basketball game is the setting: Lester is dragged along to watch Jane's dance team at half-time and cannot take his eyes off her friend.