The four principals include James Tyrone (Jack Lemmon), a once - great actor who compromised his talent by barnstorming all over the country in a tired melodrama and by consuming great quantities of
alcohol; James» wife Mary (Bethel Leslie), a morphine
addict who lives in a world of dreams and delusions; oldest son Jamie (Kevin Spacey), a drunken hellraiser; and sensitive,tuberculosis - ridden
younger son Edmund (Peter Gallagher), the Eugene O'Neill counterpart.
In the film, Reynor plays
young taxi driver John, who spends his days fighting to earn a living for himself and his
alcohol -
addicted mother (played by Toni Collette), a way of life that's threatened at every turn by forces both internal and external.