The Royal Tenenbaums

Characters

Some Royal Tenenbaums characters are lovable, others despicable, but all are quirky and, in an odd way, hilarious. Their openly emotional exchanges and frustrations are the focus of this film.

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• Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) - An excellent lawyer but a terrible father, he intentionally shot one of his sons with a BB gun during a game, and constantly refers to his daughter in public as "my adopted daughter Margot." In one scene, he lies in bed hooked up to an IV machine, faking stomach cancer, while eating a cheeseburger.
• Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston) - The mother of the Tenenbaum children, who "makes their education her top priority" and helps them climb to fame. Later on, Ethel finds love in Henry Sherman, her accountant, the complete opposite of her estranged husband Royal.
• Chas Tenenbaum (Ben Stiller) - A genius in international finance, Chas sued his father twice and had him disbarred because of the bonds his father stole from his safety deposit box when he was fourteen.
• Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) - A brilliant playwright, Margot ran away from home for two weeks and came back with half of one of her fingers missing. She married the psychiatrist Raleigh St. Clair and spends most of her time moping in her bathtub, watching television. She smokes, unbeknownst to anyone else in her family. Possibly based partially on Françoise Sagan.
• Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) - A tennis prodigy, Richie is secretly in love with his adopted sister, Margot.
• Eli Cash (Owen Wilson) - A "friend of the family" since the Tenenbaum children were very young, Eli is the non-genius character who provides a foil for the Tenenbaum family with his burning desire to "be a Tenenbaum," and his later success as an author of Western novels after the Tenenbaum family's fame has already faded.
• Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) - Ethel Tenenbaum's accountant and, eventually, romantic interest.
• Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) - Husband of the secretive Margot Tenenbaum and famed (and strange) neurologist. Anderson has mentioned that St. Clair was based on Oliver Sacks.
• Narrator (Alec Baldwin)