Fatal Attraction

Dan Gallagher is a New York lawyer with a successful career, a wife named Beth and a young daughter. When Beth and the child go away for the weekend, Dan begins an affair with Alex Forrest, a woman he has met through work. He treats the encounter as a brief diversion and expects to return to his family, but Alex sees the relationship very differently and refuses to let him go. Her insistence turns into a campaign against Dan and the life he is trying to preserve.

Adrian Lyne directed the film, which followed Nine 1/2 Weeks and came fourth in the run of features he had made to that point. James Dearden wrote the screenplay, and Stanley R. Jaffe and Sherry Lansing produced it for Paramount. Michael Douglas plays Dan, Glenn Close plays Alex, and Anne Archer plays Beth; Ellen Hamilton Latzen appears as the daughter, with Stuart Pankin and Ellen Foley among the supporting cast.

Released in September 1987, the film cost about 14 million dollars and took roughly 320 million dollars worldwide, a return that made it one of the most commercially successful releases of its year. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.8 from 1,752 votes, and a film critics' rating also stands at 6.8 from 61 reviews, so the two measures sit at much the same level.