Atlantic City is a 1980 French-Canadian romantic crime film directed by Louis Malle. Filmed in late 1979, it was released in France and Germany in 1980 and in the United States in 1981. The script was written by John Guare. It stars Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Robert Joy, Hollis McLaren, Michel Piccoli, and Al Waxman.

Atlantic City is among the twenty-six films to be nominated for all "Top Five" Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay, and one of only six amidst this group to not take home a single award. It lost the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay to Chariots of Fire, Best Director to Reds, and Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, who were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress, lost to Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond.

The film tells the story of a young Canadian woman, Sally Matthews (Susan Sarandon), whose dream for a better life in the gambling business is interrupted by the return of the drug-dealing husband she had left behind, and older Lou Pascal (Burt Lancaster), a long time resident of Atlantic City, and how their lives interact and change, both for the better.

Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States, and an internationally renowned resort city for gambling, conventions and leisure. The city also served as the inspiration for the American version of the board game Monopoly. Atlantic City is located on Absecon Island on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010 United States Census^[update], the city has a population of 39,558. There were 274,549 people living in the Atlantic City–Hammonton Metropolitan Statistical Area as of the 2010 Census.

Atlantic City officially became a city in 1854. The new city contained portions of Egg Harbor Township and Galloway Township.

The three routes into Atlantic City are the Black Horse Pike/Harding Highway (US 322/40), White Horse Pike (US 30) and the Atlantic City Expressway. Atlantic City is roughly 132 miles (212 km) south of New York City by road, 55 miles (89 km) southeast of Philadelphia. The city borders Absecon, Brigantine, Pleasantville, Ventnor City and West Atlantic City (part of Egg Harbor Township).

Susan Sarandon (born Susan Abigail Tomalin; October 4, 1946) is an American actress. She has worked in movies and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her work. She is also noted for her social and political activism for a variety of liberal causes.

Sarandon was born Susan Abigail Tomalin in New York City to a Roman Catholic family. She is the eldest of nine children of Lenora Marie (née Criscione) and Phillip Leslie Tomalin, who worked as an advertising executive, television producer, and nightclub singer during the big band era. Her father was of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry, his English ancestors being from Hackney in London. On her mother's side, she is of Italian descent, with ancestors from the regions of Tuscany and Sicily. Sarandon attended Roman Catholic schools.^{[citation needed]} She grew up in Edison, New Jersey, where she graduated from Edison High School in 1964. She then attended The Catholic University of America, from 1964 to 1968, where she began dating actor Chris Sarandon whom she married in 1967.

Robert Gerard Goulet (November 26, 1933 – October 30, 2007) was a Canadian American entertainer as a singer and actor. He is probably best known for originating the role of Lancelot in the 1960 Broadway musical Camelot and his numerous appearances in Las Vegas.

Goulet was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the only son of French Canadian parents Jeanette Gauthier and Joseph Georges André Goulet, a laborer. Through his father he was a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier as well as Jacques Goulet. Shortly after his father's death, 13-year-old Robert moved with his mother and sister Claire to Girouxville, Alberta, and he spent his formative years in Canada.

Due to the Canadian citizenship law at the time, Goulet was not awarded Canadian citizenship despite his Canadian parents, making him a Lost Canadian. A 2008 law allowed him to retroactively be rewarded citizenship, but he died before it was received.

Goulet's rise to fame started at the age of five when his aunts and uncles blackened his face with burnt cork and prompted him to do Al Jolson impressions. Though his performance was well-received by his relatives, the experience was deeply traumatic for the young Goulet, and left him with performance anxiety which plagued him for many years. Despite this stage fright, Goulet was encouraged by his parents to continue performing.