A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American biographical drama film about the mathematician John Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, played by Russell Crowe.

The film is directed by Ron Howard based on a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, who adapted the 1998 biography by Sylvia Nasar.

In addition to Crowe, the film's cast features Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Judd Hirsch, Josh Lucas, Anthony Rapp, and Christopher Plummer in supporting roles.

It received generally positive reviews and went on to gross over $313 million worldwide, and won four Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Director (Ron Howard), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress (Jennifer Connelly).

Determined to publish an original idea of his own, Nash is inspired when he and his classmates discuss how to approach a group of women at a bar.

Bored with his work at MIT, he is recruited by the mysterious William Parcher of the United States Department of Defense with a classified assignment: to identify hidden patterns in magazines and newspapers to thwart a Soviet plot.

While delivering a guest lecture at Harvard University, Nash believes he's being pursued by Soviet agents and is forcibly sedated.

Alicia uncovers the stack of unopened "classified documents" from the drop point and brings them to Nash, revealing the truth of his assignment.

Frustrated with the side effects of his antipsychotic medication, he secretly stops taking it and starts encountering Parcher, who urges him to continue his assignment in a shed near his home.

Nash returns to Princeton, approaching his old rival Hansen, now head of the mathematics department, who allows him to work out of the library and audit classes.

In 1994, Nash is awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on game theory and is honored by his fellow professors.

Howard purchased the rights to Laudor's life story for $1.5 million in 1995 and had Brad Pitt slated to play the lead role.

[3][4] After producer Brian Grazer first read an excerpt of Sylvia Nasar's 1998 book A Beautiful Mind in Vanity Fair magazine, he immediately purchased the rights to the film.

[5] Grazer met with a number of screenwriters, mostly consisting of "serious dramatists", but he chose Akiva Goldsman because of his strong passion and desire for the project.

Goldsman's creative take on the project was to avoid having viewers understand they are viewing an alternative reality until a specific point in the film.

For the scene where Nash has to teach a calculus class and gives them a complicated problem to keep them busy, Bayer chose a problem physically unrealistic but mathematically very rich, in keeping with Nash as "someone who really doesn't want to teach the mundane details, who will home in on what's really interesting".

[8] Greg Cannom was chosen to create the makeup effects for A Beautiful Mind, specifically the age progression of the characters.

[9] Howard and Grazer chose frequent collaborator James Horner to score the film because they knew of his ability to communicate.

A running discussion between the director and the composer was the concept of high-level mathematics being less about numbers and solutions, and more akin to a kaleidoscope, in that the ideas evolve and change.

[11] Two night shots were done at Fairleigh Dickinson University's campus in Florham Park, New Jersey, in the Vanderbilt Mansion ballroom.

[21] Nash spent his years between Princeton and MIT as a consultant for the RAND Corporation in California, but in the film he is portrayed as having worked for the Department of Defense at the Pentagon instead.

Howard later stated that they added the line of dialogue because they worried that the film would be criticized for suggesting that all people with schizophrenia can overcome their illness without medication.

The website's critical consensus states: "The well-acted A Beautiful Mind is both a moving love story and a revealing look at mental illness.

[36] Mike Clark of USA Today gave three-and-a-half out of four stars and also praised Crowe's performance, calling it a welcome follow-up to Howard's previous film, 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

[8] John Sutherland of The Guardian noted the film's biopic distortions, but said that "Howard pulls off an extraordinary trick in A Beautiful Mind by seducing the audience into Nash's paranoid world.

"[39] Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Lisa Navarrette criticized the casting of Jennifer Connelly as Alicia Nash as an example of whitewashing.