An Ideal Husband
A respected government minister fights to safeguard his career and marriage when a cunning woman threatens to expose a past scandal, forcing him to enlist the help of his witty friend who must outwit her before ruin strikes.
“He just doesn't know it yet.”
Synopsis
Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs. Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father. Goring knows the lady of old, and, for him, takes the whole thing pretty seriously.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 37
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Matthew GlenShot by Jake PolonskyScored by Nigel HessDesigned by Richard Elton
Box Office
1999 · Box office
⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.3× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$18.5M
Opening weekend: $193K — 1% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.
Opening week (7-day): $318K — 2% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 10 theaters
Also known as
- Ein perfekter Ehemannde
- Un marido ideales
- Un mari idéalfr
- Un marito idealeit
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Cast & Crew
37 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Rupert Everett
as Lord Goring
James Wilby
as Robert Chiltern
Julianne Moore
as Mrs Cheveley
Sadie Frost
as Laura Cheveley
Peter Vaughan
as Phipps
Jonathan Firth
as Arthur Goring
Minnie Driver
as Mabel
Trevyn Mcdowell
as Gertrude Chiltern
Cate Blanchett
as Gertrude
Robert Hardy
as Lord Caversham
Ben Pullen
as Tommy Trafford
Karen Hayley
as Mabel Chiltern
Supporting cast
8Directors
2Writers
3Producers
5Other crew
9Parents Guide
AI Personalities
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Where to watch
Live · bot-verified- The Criterion ChannelStream
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