Single White Female

Single White Female is a 1992 American erotic thriller film based on John Lutz's novel SWF Seeks Same. The film stars Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh and is directed by Barbet Schroeder.

Plot

Allison "Allie" Jones (Bridget Fonda) is a software designer in New York City, engaged to Sam Rawson (Steven Weber). In the middle of the night, Sam's ex-wife calls, and it is revealed that he slept with her recently. A hurt and angry Allie throws Sam out, breaking off their engagement, and is comforted by neighbor Graham Knox (Peter Friedman), an aspiring actor. The next morning she attends a business lunch with Mitchell Myerson (Stephen Tobolowsky), a fashion house owner who is looking to buy Allie's revolutionary new program. He manipulates her into significantly lowering the cost, on the basis that his recommendations within the industry will be her future business. As he is her first and only client, she accepts.

Allie advertises for a new roommate to share her apartment in the Ansonia. She eventually settles on Hedra Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whom she nicknames "Hedy", and they become friends. Hedy tells of how she was supposed to be a twin but her twin was stillborn, leaving her with a constant feeling of loneliness. After a few weeks, however, Hedy becomes overly protective of Allie by erasing Sam's voice-mail asking Allie for a reconciliation. Later she buys a puppy that she names Buddy to bond with Allie. Hedy soon becomes jealous and upset when Sam is able to win Allie back.

Jennifer Jason Leigh

Jennifer Jason Leigh (born February 5, 1962) is an American actress. Leigh began her career as a teenager in the 1970s, guest-starring on several television shows. Her film breakthrough came in 1982 for her performance as Stacy Hamilton in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She continued performing as an adult, receiving critical praise for her roles in the 1990 films Miami Blues and Last Exit to Brooklyn. In 1991, she appeared in Ron Howard's Backdraft, and in 1992 she acted in the drama-thriller Single White Female. In 1993, she appeared in the ensemble film Short Cuts, directed by Robert Altman, and in 1994 she starred in the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Dorothy Parker in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). In 1995, she starred in a film written by her mother, screenwriter Barbara Turner, titled Georgia. In 2001, she co-directed a film with Alan Cumming titled The Anniversary Party.

In 2002, Leigh appeared in the crime-drama Road to Perdition. In 2007, she starred in Margot at the Wedding, which was directed by her former husband, Noah Baumbach. She had a recurring role on the television series Weeds as Jill Price-Gray. In 2015, she received critical acclaim for her voice-work as Lisa in Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa, and for her role as Daisy Domergue in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe, Critic's Choice, BAFTA, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Barbet Schroeder

Barbet Schroeder (born 26 August 1941) is an Iranian-born film director and producer who started his career in French cinema in the 1960s, working together with directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette. Since the 1990s he has directed many big budget Hollywood films in which he often combined family drama with thriller and action genre.

Life and career

Schroeder was born in Tehran, Iran, the son of Ursula, a German-born physician, and Jean-William Schroeder, a Swiss geologist. Both he and his family left Iran for France, where he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Schroeder's production company "Les Films du Losange", founded by him at age 23, produced some of the best-known films of the French New Wave. His directorial debut, More (1969), about heroin addiction, became a hit in Europe. Pink Floyd wrote music for this movie and released the album, More. They also wrote the soundtrack for his 1972 film La Vallée, released as the album Obscured by Clouds.

He later went on to direct more mainstream Hollywood fare, such as Barfly (1987) starring Mickey Rourke, Single White Female (1992), and Reversal of Fortune (1990), for which Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bülow received an Academy Award. Despite his many commercially successful films, Schroeder continues to be interested in making smaller films with a more limited audience, such as the adaptation of Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo's controversial novel La virgen de los sicarios (2000) or the documentary General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait (1974), featuring extensive interviews with the Ugandan dictator and Terror's advocate (2007) about terrorism in the last 50 years seen through the eyes of a lawyer, Jacques Vergès, and his clients.

Bridget Fonda

Bridget Jane Fonda (born January 27, 1964) is an American actress. She is known for her roles in such films as The Godfather Part III, Single White Female, Point of No Return, It Could Happen to You, and Jackie Brown. She also provides the voice for Jenna in the 1995 animated feature film Balto. She is the daughter of Peter Fonda, niece of Jane Fonda and granddaughter of Henry Fonda.

Personal life

Fonda was born in Los Angeles, California, to a family of actors, including her grandfather Henry Fonda, father Peter Fonda, and her aunt Jane Fonda. Her mother, Susan Jane Brewer, is an artist. She is named after actress Margaret Sullavan's daughter Bridget Hayward. Her maternal grandmother, Mary Sweet, married businessman Noah Dietrich.

Sullavan was Henry Fonda's first wife. Bridget's parents divorced and Peter remarried Portia Rebecca Crockett (former wife of author Thomas McGuane). Peter and Portia raised Bridget, her brother Justin, and older stepbrother Thomas McGuane Jr. in the Coldwater Canyon section of Los Angeles and south of Livingston, Montana. Fonda attended Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles. In 1986, Bridget met Eric Stoltz and, in 1990, they began dating. The relationship ended after eight years.

Don Roos

Donald Paul "Don" Roos (born April 14, 1955) is an American screenwriter and film director.

Life and career

Roos was born in New York. He attended the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. After graduating, Roos moved to Los Angeles, where he pursued a career writing for television.

Roos supported himself by working as a word processor, and to this day jokes that he has that as a fall-back plan. Roos began his writing career when he had a friend of his impersonate an agent and represent him; a phone call led to a job with playwright Mart Crowley (The Boys in the Band), who at the time was Executive Producer of Hart to Hart. Roos went on to write for The Colbys, Nightingales, and other TV shows, before his spec scripts led to feature film writing assignments. His first major film was 1991's Academy Award-nominated Love Field, an interracial drama starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Dennis Haysbert.

Roos's work as the writer of the film Single White Female has earned him a permanent space in Hollywood movie trivia, since that title has entered the lexicon in reference to the film's psychopathic lead character who begins to take on her roommate's identity.