‘Fatal Attraction’ opened today in 1987: How many Oscar nominations did it get? Cast and plot

It is 40 years to the day since Fatal Attraction, James Dearden and Adrian Lyne’s iconic erotic thriller, premiered in movie theatres in the United States.

Based on the 1980 short film Diversion, Fatal Attraction starred Michael Douglas as Dan Gallagher, a married New York lawyer who has a one-night stand with Alex Forrest, a publisher he meets at a work event. Dan believes the fling to be a one-off, no-strings-attached liaison - but Alex, played unforgettably by Glenn Close, has other ideas, and the spurned lover begins to ferociously stalk him and his family.

In one memorable scene, for example, Alex kills Dan’s son’s pet rabbit, boiling it to death at the attorney’s family home. It is Dan’s wife, Beth - played by Anne Archer - who discovers the murdered bunny on the kitchen stove.

Watch Fatal Attraction’s iconic “bunny boiler” scene:

How much did Fatal Attraction earn at the box office?

Following its release on September 18, 1987, Fatal Attraction proved a box-office smash. At US theatres, it took just over $156 million, per the Hollywood finance experts Box Office Mojo. It was the second-highest-grossing movie in the States in 1987, behind only Three Men and a Baby.

How many Oscars was Fatal Attraction nominated for?

Fatal Attraction accrued six Oscars nominations, receiving nods for Best Picture, Best Director (Lyne), Best Actress (Close), Best Supporting Actress (Archer), Best Film Editing and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. Only The Last Emperor and Broadcast News earned more nominations for the 60th Academy Awards, held in April 1988.

However, Fatal Attraction was beaten to the golden statuette in all six categories. (Douglas did, though, win that year’s Best Actor award for his performance in another hit movie, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.)

“Some credited it for saving marriages”

Widely considered as the defining movie in the erotic thriller genre, Fatal Attraction not only swept the box office and earned Oscars recognition; it also established itself as something of a cultural phenomenon, sparking debate across American society on a number of issues. “It touched on a wealth of polarizing topics,” Emily Yahr wrote in the Washington Post last year. “Marriage, sex, infidelity, toxic masculinity, gender roles, mental illness. Many even speculated that it was an allegory for the AIDS crisis, as a reminder that sex has consequences. Some credited it for saving marriages.”

But despite its success, Fatal Attraction does not appear to have been released to universal, unbridled acclaim among prominent movie critics. The Chicago Sun-Times’ legendary film journalist Roger Ebert, for instance, described the picture as “a spellbinding psychological thriller”, but added: “[It] could have been a great movie if the filmmakers had not thrown character and plausibility to the winds in the last minutes”.

The Chicago Tribune’s Dave Kehr, meanwhile, raised the issue of the sexual politics of Fatal Attraction’s depiction of its female lead: “The most feared figure in Hollywood films is the career woman,” Kehr wrote. “She can be humiliated, tamed or blown away, but she must be eliminated, or so our increasingly misogynistic movies are telling us.”

Yahr agrees: “The main ongoing theme that audiences and critics have discussed for decades is what they think the film has to say about women with careers - sending the message that not only can women not have it all, but the single ones are angry and devious and desperate, and their devastation over not having a husband or family will make them murder your child’s pet.”

Fatal Attraction - watch the trailer:

Fatal Attraction TV remake a flop

In 2023, Fatal Attraction was remade into a TV series, starring Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan as Dan and Alex, respectively. Released on the streaming service Paramount+, it failed to repeat the 1987 movie’s success. The series received almost uniformly poor reviews - “this show has butchered a classic”, The Times’ Hugo Rifkind said - and was cancelled after its eight-part first season.