FAQ for
American Beauty (1999) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for American Beauty can be found here.

No. American Beauty was taken from a screenplay written by American screenwriter Alan Ball.

The protagonist is Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) a middle-aged man who is wholly unsatisfied with his life. His job is lame, his marriage is sexless. His wife, who used to be adventurous and charming, has become materialistic, self-absorbed, and uptight. He's completely lost touch with his 16 year old daughter. Both his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) and his daughter Jane (Thora Birch) think he's a complete loser, and he has nothing particularly good to say about himself either. Within a couple of days, a number of factors come together that will change Lester's life. First, a new boss at work tells Lester he must write a report about how useful he is at work; if he fails at this task he'll lose his job, and Lester is outraged at the injustice of having to defend his worth at a job he hates. Then, Lester meets Jane's friend Angela (Mena Suvari) a beautiful, flirty teenager who suddenly reinvigorates Lester's sexual drive. Finally, at his wife's company party, Lester meets Ricky (Wes Bentley), the boy who just moved next door. Ricky reminds Lester of his younger self: he smokes pot, he's laid-back and confident and unworried about what others think of him. Those factors combine to prompt Lester into an intense midlife crisis, which brings to the surface all the problems in the Burnham household. Over the course of about 6-8 months Lester, Carolyn, and Janie turn into the people that they want to be, but only at the cost of giving up the pretense of having a happy, normal family.

It's stated in the script that Jane was 16.

No. In the original script, Angela Hayes walks back into the kitchen while Ricky and Jane are observing Lester's body. She screams and accuses them of murdering Lester because of all she had said about how much she hated him and such. Ricky and Jane are arrested and put on trial. Colonel Fitts [Chris Cooper] goes through Ricky's stuff and finds the videotape of Ricky and Jane talking in his bedroom at night where she jokingly "hires" him to kill her dad. He hands the tape over to the authorities, saying that he is "obligated to present the proof of Ricky's wrongdoings, which came as a result of the discipline that I failed to teach him", and the tape is the sealing evidence in the trial. Ricky and Jane are both sentenced to life in prison.

Later, a van drives down the street and passes the billboard sign, which now reads: Buddy and Caroline Kane, the King & Queen of Real Estate. After this, we see the credit sequence of a Baywatch-esque TV show with Angela running towards us from the water, with the subtitles: and Angela Hayes as Julie. She DID become a famous model/actress. And lastly, before we proceed to Lester's closing monologue, Mrs. Fitts [Allison Janney] is ironing some clothes when she finds the white t-shirt stained with blood in the Colonel's clothes pile. She studies the shirt for a moment and then shoves it inside a drawer that she locks and will likely never look at it again. The case will never be reversed, and the Colonel gets away.

The song is called "Don't Let It Bring You Down" by Annie Lennox. It is played in the 102nd minute of the movie. For the rest of the songs and corresponding scenes in the movie try here.