Trailer
Plot summary
Lee Israel wrote biographies of Katharine Hepburn and Estée Lauder, but her latest book failed, she has writer's block, and her agent Marjorie will not seek an advance for a life of Fanny Brice. Broke, drinking, months behind on her rent, with a sick cat and no one else at home, Lee sells her possessions to live. The bookseller Anna buys the Hepburn letter Lee was given years earlier. Researching Brice in a library, Lee finds two of Brice's letters, sells one, and types an added postscript onto the other, which Anna pays more for. Lee then buys typewriters and writes letters in the voices of dead writers. At a gay bar she runs into Jack Hock, whom she recognizes from a book party.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
The film invents the reconciliation between Lee Israel and Jack Hock: in real life they broke up because he turned her in for the forgeries, not because of her cat, and they had no contact before his death from AIDS-related complications.- Sam Rockwell was originally set to play Jack Hock, back in 2011 when the project was first conceived.
- A scripted scene showing the real Lee Israel barely stopping herself from tripping Jack Hock after seeing him in a New York City clinic for indigent patients was written but never filmed.
