Where to watch A Beautiful Mind (2001)
A Beautiful Mind is available to stream in US on YouTube. It can also be rented or bought from AppleTV and Amazon.
A brilliant but socially awkward mathematician makes a groundbreaking discovery and begins working in secret on a dangerous cryptography project. As paranoia and uncertainty take hold, he faces a painful struggle to understand his mind, protect those close to him, and find a way forward.
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Paul Bettany, Christopher Plummer, Adam Goldberg, Josh Lucas, Anthony Rapp, Jason Gray-Stanford, Judd Hirsch, Austin Pendleton, Vivien Cardone
Stream | US
Rent or Buy
Trivia & production notes
- Ron Howard had previously attempted to make Laws of Madness, a schizophrenia film based on Michael Laudor's true story, after purchasing the rights for $1.5 million with Brad Pitt attached to star, but abandoned the project after Laudor killed his fiancée during a psychotic episode in 1998.
- Producer Brian Grazer purchased the film rights to A Beautiful Mind after reading an excerpt in Vanity Fair magazine, and chose screenwriter Akiva Goldsman because of his passionate commitment to the project rather than more established dramatists.
- Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman's approach was to keep viewers unaware they were watching hallucinations until a specific moment in the film, designed to mimic how John Nash himself experienced his delusions.
- Ron Howard directed the film based on Goldsman's first draft, requesting that the love story between Nash and his wife be emphasized as central to the narrative.
- Makeup artist Greg Cannom developed a new silicone-based makeup formula for A Beautiful Mind that could be layered and reduced application time from eight hours to four hours.
- Russell Crowe was fitted with several dentures during filming to give him a slight overbite that would resemble the real John Nash's facial features.
- Composer James Horner chose Welsh singer Charlotte Church for the film's soprano vocals because he wanted a voice with both the purity of a child and the vibrato of an adult.
- The film was shot 90 percent chronologically, with three separate trips made to Princeton University's campus.
- The real John Nash experienced only auditory hallucinations, but the filmmakers added visual hallucinations to the movie and always introduced them audibly first to provide audience cues about their subjective nature.
- The film invented several characters including Nash's roommate Charles Herman, his sister Marcee, and Defense Department agent William Parcher, as most characters besides John and Alicia Nash do not correspond to real people in his life.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article A Beautiful Mind, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.
Also available in
This title is listed in these countries too — pick one to see its services and prices.