Though Amanda Peet has worked steadily in television in recent years, the sincere and urbane comedy “Fantasy Life” marks her first role in a movie since 2015. Her performance as a woman struggling to get back in touch with her true self easily rates among the finest work of her career, alongside turns in such films as “Something’s Gotta Give” and “The Whole Nine Yards.”
She says she never particularly noticed her absence.
“I wasn’t thinking about it at all,” Peet, 54, says in a recent interview. “I think part of it is because the landscape has changed and it’s a little bit more of a mish-mosh [between movies and TV]. You’re getting a lot of nuanced, middle-aged women characters now in both. I’ve always just based everything on the writing for the last however long.”
In the new film, Peet plays Dianne, who stepped away from an acting career and now lives in Brooklyn with her self-involved musician husband (Alessandro Nivola). She finds herself emotionally entangled with Sam (Matthew Shear), the troubled young man they hire to help look after their three daughters. Warm and insightful, “Fantasy Life” is a low-key throwback to the talky city-dweller comedies of Nicole Holofcener and Noah Baumbach.
The film is the first as writer-director for Shear, best known as an actor in numerous Baumbach films including “Mistress America” and “Marriage Story” and for his role on the TNT series “The Alienist.” When it premiered at last year’s South by Southwest Film & TV Festival, “Fantasy Life” garnered a special jury prize for Peet’s performance and an audience award.
Peet says that from the first time she looked at the script, with its world of therapy sessions and chaotic family dinners, she knew she wanted to be a part of it.
“I almost did a spit-take,” Peet remembers of her first read. “I was like, ‘Oh, I wanna do this movie.’ Matthew’s sense of humor was very special and reminded of the kind of New York Jewish humor that I love. I wanted to do right by him.”
Matthew Shear and Amanda Peet in the movie “Fantasy Life.”
(Greenwich Entertainment)
Peet connected to the unease of not knowing how to recognize when one has become a has-been and staying open to whatever life still has to offer. That some of her deepest insecurities were being conveyed by someone like Shear, 41, seemed even more remarkable.
“I thought it was weird that the writer was a man writing this character — that’s true,” says Peet. “Those are things that I feel all the time, anxiety about whether it’s over, when it’s going to be over, should it be over? People who are in the creative world feel this precarity all the time.
“I’ve gotten much better in my old age, weirdly,” says Peet, “even though being an older actress is not easy, I feel more like I have such a better perspective about Hollywood and about the business and have more peace about it.“
Catching herself, she adds, “If my husband reads this, he’ll be like, ‘I’m sorry, what? What peace are you referring to?’”
“I’ve gotten much better in my old age, weirdly,” says Peet, “even though being an older actress is not easy, I feel more like I have such a better perspective about Hollywood and about the business and have more peace about it.“
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
For our interview, Peet is in a hotel room in Los Angeles, in the middle of a press day for the second season of the Apple TV series “Your Friends & Neighbors,” while Shear is in the law office of his father-in-law on the Upper West Side of New York City, down the street from his apartment.
In conversation, Peet and Shear have an easy, playful chemistry even on a video call from opposite coasts, with Peet often finishing or clarifying Shear’s thoughts, while humbly deflecting credit whenever he wants to say she was responsible for something turning out as well as it did.
In the time since the movie premiered last year, Peet saw both her parents go through hospice care before dying and had her own battle with breast cancer. (She recently chronicled those events in an essay for the New Yorker.)
She describes her personal experiences with an insight, vulnerability and openness that is reminiscent of the raw emotions of Peet’s recent performances, which traffic in an understated, unassuming power.
Peet, who says her own health is currently “doing great,” recalls she was actually with Shear at a film festival in Miami earlier this year when she received news her mother’s condition had taken a turn for the worse and she had to leave to go to her.
“It’s been a part of my life for a while, what’s gone on with my mom,” she says. “It was harder when it was a secret. It’s been more calming to have people I love, like Matthew, who I can talk about work and get on with it, but they also know what’s going on.”
Shear says he first began his original screenplay with an image of a young man having a panic attack in the self-help section of a bookshop and grew the script from there. He had worked as a babysitter for Upper East Side families in his 20s and was able to draw on the ways he often felt himself inserted too deeply into the dynamics of the families he was working for.
When a friend from outside of show business suggested Peet, the idea just clicked. And then after she read the script and agreed to participate, also getting involved as a producer, things gained momentum, adding cast members like Nivola based on her involvement.
Sheer remembers a collaboration with Peet that extended to all aspects of the story — even to other characters. “Which is not the cliché about an actor who gives notes,” he says. “Amanda was so resilient on the journey.”
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
“It was completely game-changing,” says Shear. “On paper, having Amanda attached to the movie just helped us get other people interested. But from our first conversation on Zoom, when I was blabbering and trying to make excuses for the fact that I was a first-time director, she just said to me, ‘You’re fine. Let’s talk about the script.’ And so that’s what we did. “
Peet brought a fresh perspective to the characters and story beyond just her own part.
“She had really sharp, thoughtful things to say about the script and helped me develop things that had nothing to do with her character,” Shear says. “Which is not the cliché about an actor who gives notes.
“And then it was just off to the races,” Shear says. “Amanda was so resilient on the journey. She just never lost confidence in the project.”
Peet did also have thoughts on how to expand upon her character’s growth and the nature of her burgeoning relationship with Sam. Though they do share a meaningful kiss, the stakes of their relationship remain more emotional than physical.
“One thing I can share,” says Shear with obvious relish, “was that one of Amanda’s first notes was that I had to turn up the sexual chemistry between us. I mean, you weren’t weird about it.“
“I was definitely weird about it,” Peet shoots back.
It was Peet who suggested a scene in which Shear’s Sam helps Peet’s character Dianne with creating a self-tape audition, a very specific indignity suffered by many working actors, as a way of seeing their growing affection for one another and how deeply he is falling for her.
“I remember thinking that it does have to be a love story of sorts,” says Peet. “And so it does have to go from like, ‘Oh, you’re the manny’ to waking up to each other as something other than this transactional thing with you babysitting. And just slowly turning up the dial.”
“Matthew’s sense of humor was very special and reminded of the kind of New York Jewish humor that I love,” says Peet. “I wanted to do right by him.”
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
The film’s perspective on mental health, including Sam being open about his use of antidepressants, is quietly refreshing.
“I have a pet peeve about mental-health narratives in a lot of movies,” says Shear. “They’re usually either people in the mental hospital, hysterical suicide narratives or like the Joker not taking his meds. You don’t see what it’s like to be a normal-enough person and manage some very common mental-health issues and have some specifics about what that experience is like. I wanted to make something that had that.”
“I liked that the script was handling a more relatable kind of mental illness,” Peet says. “The script had a nonjudgmental view of that, but it’s not an issue movie. It’s not trying to get on any soapbox or anything like that. If you’re going to talk about hard issues, [it’s important] that you’re not constantly pointing to your own profundity as a writer, but instead making things funny and entertaining. I think that’s where I like to be.”
In another scene, Peet’s character is asked for an autograph by a young woman who mistakes her for the actor Lake Bell. This has actually happened to Peet “like a million times,” she admits, including once on a red carpet when photographers started shouting Bell’s name at her.
“It’s a weird thing because you’re like, what do I do here?” says Peet with a laugh. “What’s the least douchey way to get out of this?”
The scene originally had Peet’s character being recognized by someone who awkwardly can’t quite place her. When Peet told Shear she is often mistaken for Bell, they reconfigured the moment. (Peet and Bell have texted about the phenomenon and Peet only recently learned that sometimes Bell is mistaken for her.)
“Fantasy Life” has played a handful of other festivals, including L.A.’s AFI Fest last fall, since its 2025 premiere at SXSW. Shear is happy and relieved to see the film finally come to theaters, in part so that he can better focus on writing his next script.
Peet perks up at the mention of Shear’s new writing project.
“Is there a part for me in it?” she asks earnestly.
“We’ll talk later,” says Shear. Reading her face and realizing that he might have sounded dismissive, he adds, “It’s a conversation. A really creative conversation.”
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