Movies about narcissistic personality disorder- Mental Health Related Films

Human lives and behaviour are far more nuanced and emotive than any psychiatric diagnostic system or symptom checklist can ever portray.

Most people recognise aspects of themselves in at least a few psychiatric diagnostic categories. The difference between normal and disorder is not straightforward and often has more to do with degree rather than kind, i.e. does it cause big problems?

While movies are not perfect depictions of reality, they often present themes in relatable, enriching, usefully challenging, and thought-provoking ways.

We invite you to explore mental health through movies that raise awareness, open dialogue, present complexity, entertain, and/or normalise experiences.

Click to see the Ultimate List of Mental Health Movies Index

What is Narcissistic personality disorder?

Narcissistic personality disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis (see criteria below) which involves a pattern of self-centeredness, grandiose self-image, and lack of empathy and consideration for other people.

In psychological terms, narcissism does not mean self-love. Grandiosity usually sits alongside a fragile sense of worth, and many people with the diagnosis are acutely sensitive to criticism and to comparison with others. That sensitivity is part of what makes the condition painful to live with, not simply difficult to be around.

Change is hard. It is not impossible. Grandiosity and defensiveness make it difficult to acknowledge a problem at all, which in turn makes engaging in any therapy difficult, and where narcissistic difficulties sit alongside another condition they raise the chance of leaving treatment early. There have been no randomised trials of treatment for the disorder itself, so nobody can promise an outcome. What the follow-up literature does show is movement: in one three-year study of twenty patients diagnosed with the disorder, most had improved significantly, most markedly in how they related to other people.

In psychiatry, narcissistic personality disorder is defined in the DSM-5, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, under code F60.81. The criteria are summarised below in our own words rather than reproduced; the full wording is in the manual itself.

A paraphrase of the DSM-5 criteria. Provided for orientation, not for self-assessment.

The diagnosis describes a lasting pattern of grandiosity, a need for admiration and a lack of empathy, present from early adulthood and across different situations. Five or more of nine features are required. In outline they cover: an inflated sense of one's own importance; absorption in fantasies of success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love; a belief in being special and understood only by other special people; a need for excessive admiration; a sense of entitlement to favourable treatment; using other people to get what one wants; an unwillingness to recognise what others feel or need; envy of others, or the belief that others envy you; and arrogant or haughty attitudes.

A list is not a diagnosis. These criteria are applied by a clinician through assessment over time, alongside a person's history and how they are managing in their life. Recognising yourself in several of them is common and is not, on its own, a sign that you have the disorder.

Movies about Narcissistic personality disorder

A note on how to read this list. Each entry describes what a film portrays. None of them is a diagnosis of anyone, on screen or off. Writers reach for narcissistic traits because a story needs a motive, so the characters below lean heavily towards villains; that is a fact about cinema, not about the people who carry this diagnosis. Most people with narcissistic personality disorder are not violent, many are in real distress themselves, and abuse is a choice rather than a symptom. Where a film dramatises the life of a real person, we describe the portrayal and not the person.

If we missed an essential film about narcissistic personality disorder, please let us know. We would love to include it.

Note: Movies may trigger painful memories and emotions. Please use your judgement and ensure support is available if need be.

The score shown with each entry is a viewer score out of 10 taken from public film databases. It is not an age or content certification, and it shifts over time.

Movie Title: Mommie Dearest - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1981

Viewer score: 6.6

Cast: Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid, Steve Forrest

Storyline: Adapted from Christina Crawford's 1978 memoir, the film dramatises her account of an abusive childhood with her adoptive mother, the actress Joan Crawford, played by Faye Dunaway. As written and performed, the character shows traits associated with narcissistic, histrionic and borderline personality difficulties. The memoir's account is contested, including by others in the family, and nothing here is a diagnosis of the real Joan Crawford.

Movie Title: Gaslight - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1944

Viewer score: 7.8

Cast: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten

Storyline: In the 1880s a woman returns from Italy to live with her new husband in London. He systematically manipulates her into doubting her own mind, in the performance that gave the word gaslighting to the language, and the character shows traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder. The coercion is what he does, not a symptom he has.

Movie Title: The Devil Wears Prada - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2006

Viewer score: 6.9

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Adrian Grenier

Storyline: A young woman named Andy Sachs secures a job as an assistant to Miranda Priestly, a powerful fashion magazine editor. Throughout the film, Miranda displays traits consistent with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Movie Title: Hush - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1998

Viewer score: 5.4

Cast: Jessica Lange, Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnathon Schaech

Storyline: Newlyweds move to the family thoroughbred horse ranch, where the husband's mother sets out to get rid of her new daughter-in-law. The character is written with the possessiveness and entitlement associated with narcissistic personality disorder.

Movie Title: Gone Girl - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2014

Viewer score: 8.1

Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris

Storyline: A man becomes the focus of suspicion when his wife, Amy, goes missing. Throughout the film, Amy's actions exhibit traits consistent with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Movie Title: Sleeping with the Enemy - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1991

Viewer score: 6.2

Cast: Julia Roberts, Patrick Bergin, Kevin Anderson

Storyline: A young woman fakes her own death to escape a violent marriage, and finds her husband will not let her go. The film depicts coercive control and stalking, and writes the husband with traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder. The two are not the same thing: most people who abuse do not have this diagnosis, and most people with it do not abuse.

Movie Title: There Will Be Blood - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2007

Viewer score: 8.2

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds

Storyline: Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector at the turn of the twentieth century, builds a fortune and destroys every relationship he has in the process. He is written with a ruthless appetite for power and recognition, and shows traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder.

Movie Title: The Invisible Man - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2020

Viewer score: 7.1

Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Harriet Dyer

Storyline: Cecilia suspects her abusive ex-partner's death was staged, and begins to experience events nobody else will believe. The film is a study of surveillance and coercive control, and writes Adrian with traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder.

Movie Title: The Dictator - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2012

Viewer score: 6.4

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, John C. Reilly

Storyline: Admiral General Aladeen, the dictator of a fictional North African state, arrives in New York and loses his identity along with his beard. A broad caricature, played for exaggerated grandiosity, entitlement and demand for admiration.

Movie Title: A Streetcar Named Desire - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1951

Viewer score: 8.1

Cast: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter

Storyline: Blanche DuBois, a fading Southern belle, moves into her sister and brother-in-law's cramped New Orleans apartment. Blanche and Stanley are each written as vain and self-absorbed, and both show narcissistic traits, though Blanche is more often read through trauma and loss than through this diagnosis.

Movie Title: Arthur - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1981

Viewer score: 6.9

Cast: Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli, John Gielgud

Storyline: A wealthy, immature young man, written with the entitlement and self-absorption associated with narcissistic personality disorder, is on the brink of an arranged marriage to an heiress. He falls in love with a working-class woman and begins to grow up.

Movie Title: Scarface - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1983

Viewer score: 8.3

Cast: Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer

Storyline: Tony Montana, a powerful drug lord, is written with antisocial and narcissistic traits. His cocaine-fuelled paranoia marks the beginning of his downfall.

Movie Title: Wall Street - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1987

Viewer score: 7.4

Cast: Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Tamara Tunie

Storyline: A young stockbroker, Bud Fox, falls in with Gordon Gekko, a corporate raider whose appetite for winning is written as grandiose and exploitative. Both characters show narcissistic traits. Bud's greed costs his father his job and Bud his career.

Movie Title: Heathers - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1989

Viewer score: 7.3

Cast: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty

Storyline: Veronica belongs to the most popular clique at her school and despises what it does to everyone else. Its leader, Heather, is written with the cruelty and status hunger associated with narcissistic traits. A prank Veronica and her boyfriend play on her goes horribly wrong.

Movie Title: Rain Man - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1988

Viewer score: 8

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise

Storyline: Charlie Babbitt, a self-absorbed and entitled car dealer, learns on his father's death that he has an older brother, Raymond, who is autistic and lives in a residential care facility, and that the estate has been left in trust for him. Charlie shows narcissistic traits rather than the full clinical picture; the film is about what happens to them on the drive west.

Movie Title: Small Sacrifices - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1989

Viewer score: 7.7

Cast: Farrah Fawcett, Ryan O'Neal, Gordon Clapp

Storyline: A television dramatisation of Ann Rule's account of the Diane Downs case. Downs arrives at a hospital with her three children, all shot, and tells police they were attacked by a stranger; she was convicted in 1984 of murdering one of them and attempting to murder the other two. The film portrays her with the traits of antisocial and narcissistic personality difficulties. Downs is alive and in prison; we describe the portrayal and make no diagnostic claim about her.

Movie Title: Basic Instinct - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1992

Viewer score: 6.9

Cast: Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas, George Dzundza

Storyline: The former rock star Johnny Boz is found dead in his bed and his girlfriend Catherine, a novelist, becomes the suspect. She is written as manipulative and grandiose, with narcissistic and antisocial traits.

Movie Title: To Die For - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1995

Viewer score: 6.8

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix

Storyline: A small-town weather reporter, written with an unshakeable belief in her own destiny, will do anything to become a network anchor - including having her husband killed. The portrayal draws on narcissistic traits throughout.

Movie Title: Matilda - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1996

Viewer score: 6.8

Cast: Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Mara Wilson

Storyline: Matilda's parents are written as vain, neglectful and wholly uninterested in her, and her school principal is a bully. When she discovers her telekinetic powers she uses them against the adults making her life miserable.

Movie Title: Cruel Intentions - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1999

Viewer score: 6.9

Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon

Storyline: Kathryn and Sebastian are wealthy Manhattan step-siblings, both written as entitled and exploitative, with narcissistic traits used as the engine of the plot. Kathryn bets Sebastian his Jaguar against herself that he cannot seduce the headmaster's daughter. He falls in love with her instead.

Movie Title: Magnolia - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1999

Viewer score: 8

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jason Robards, Julianne Moore

Storyline: Nine lives in the San Fernando Valley turn out to be connected. One is a self-styled seduction guru, estranged from his dying father, written with grandiosity, contempt for women and a brittleness underneath. The characters are all in search of love and forgiveness.

Movie Title: The Talented Mr. Ripley - Watch now on Prime

Release: 1999

Viewer score: 7.3

Cast: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law

Storyline: Tom Ripley, written with antisocial traits, is sent to Italy to retrieve Dickie Greenleaf, a wealthy man's son whose charm and casual cruelty carry narcissistic traits of their own. Tom goes to extreme lengths to make Dickie's life his own.

Movie Title: American Psycho - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2000

Viewer score: 7.6

Cast: Christian Bale, Jared Leto, Chloe Sevigny

Storyline: A wealthy investment banker, written with antisocial and narcissistic traits, is a serial killer by night. Or is he? A satire of the surfaces of 1980s Manhattan.

Movie Title: Zoolander - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2001

Viewer score: 6.6

Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Christine Taylor

Storyline: A male model whose vanity is the whole joke is recruited by the fashion designer Jacobin Mugatu, who brainwashes him to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia. Broad caricature, played entirely for laughs.

Movie Title: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2002

Viewer score: 7.4

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

Storyline: Harry's second year at Hogwarts. The new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart, is written as a vain fraud who has taken credit for other people's achievements - a comic study in grandiosity.

Movie Title: Phone Booth - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2002

Viewer score: 7.1

Cast: Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker

Storyline: A celebrity publicist, written as vain and habitually dishonest, uses the same phone booth to call the woman he is pursuing while married. A sniper traps him in it and makes him tell the truth.

Movie Title: Mean Girls - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2004

Viewer score: 7

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Jonathan Bennett, Rachel McAdams

Storyline: Cady, home-schooled until now, falls in with the Plastics, the school's ruling clique. Their leader Regina is written as demanding admiration and trading in humiliation. Cady and her friends set out to bring her down.

Movie Title: Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2008

Viewer score: 7.2

Cast: Kristen Bell, Jason Segel, Paul Rudd

Storyline: TV star Sarah Marshall breaks up with her boyfriend Peter, who goes to Hawaii to get over it, only to find Sarah at the same hotel with her new boyfriend - a rock star written as gloriously self-absorbed.

Movie Title: Step Brothers - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2008

Viewer score: 6.9

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen

Storyline: Two grown men still living at home become step-brothers when Brennan's mother marries Dale's father. Both are written as arrested, entitled and grandiose, and their rivalry pulls the family apart before they unite to put it back together.

Movie Title: Dorian Gray - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2009

Viewer score: 6.3

Cast: Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Rebecca Hall

Storyline: Young Dorian trades his soul to keep his beauty, in a portrait that ages in his place. The character is vanity itself, and the film reads as a fable about narcissism rather than a portrait of the disorder.

Movie Title: Blue Jasmine - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2013

Viewer score: 7.3

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard

Storyline: Jasmine, a New York socialite left with nothing after her husband's fraud and death, moves in with her sister in San Francisco. She is written with grandiosity and a desperate need to be seen as she once was, alongside evident distress.

Movie Title: Breaking Bad - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2008

Viewer score: 9.5

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul

Television series (not a film). Storyline: A high school chemistry teacher with inoperable lung cancer begins manufacturing and selling drugs to provide for his family after his death. Over five seasons the writing moves him from fear to grandiosity and a need for control and recognition. Whether that amounts to narcissistic personality disorder is contested; the traits are plainly there. Its viewer score is a series score and is not comparable with the film scores beside it.

Movie Title: The Iceman - Watch now on Prime

Release: 2012

Viewer score: 6.9

Cast: Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, James Franco, Winona Ryder

Storyline: A dramatisation of the life of Richard Kuklinski, a contract killer convicted of murder in 1988, who kept his work hidden from his family for decades. The film portrays him as cold, self-justifying and without remorse. The forensic psychiatrist who interviewed him in prison described antisocial and paranoid personality disorder rather than narcissism, so the entry belongs here for what the film shows, not for a diagnosis.

Finding help

If any of this reads close to home, for yourself or for someone in your life, psychotherapy is where the work is done. No medication is approved for narcissistic personality disorder itself; medication is used only for conditions that occur alongside it.

There are no randomised trials of any treatment for the disorder, so practice draws on treatments developed for related personality difficulties, adapted for narcissistic pathology: mentalisation-based therapy, transference-focused psychotherapy and schema-focused therapy. These are longer-term treatments and they need a practitioner trained in them.

Progress is usually slow and rarely comfortable. Sensitivity to criticism means a good therapist works carefully rather than confrontationally, and the early months are largely about building enough trust to stay. Nobody can promise a particular result. What people often do find is that relationships, work and their own sense of steadiness become easier to manage.

People living close to someone with these difficulties carry a load of their own, and therapy in their own right is a reasonable thing to seek.

Click here to find a therapist, psychologist, or counsellor near you.

References and Links

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596

Caligor, E., Levy, K. N., & Yeomans, F. E. (2015). Narcissistic personality disorder: Diagnostic and clinical challenges. American Journal of Psychiatry, 172(5), 415-422. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2014.14060723

Ronningstam, E., Gunderson, J., & Lyons, M. (1995). Changes in pathological narcissism. American Journal of Psychiatry, 152(2), 253-257. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.152.2.253

Kacel, E. L., Ennis, N., & Pereira, D. B. (2017). Narcissistic personality disorder in clinical health psychology practice: Case studies of comorbid psychological distress and life-limiting illness. Behavioral Medicine, 43(3), 156-164. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5819598/

Weinberg, I. (2024). Building hope for treatment of narcissistic personality disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 80(4), 721-732. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23598

Acknowledgements

The above article was written under my close direction and supervision. However, much credit goes to Charlene Poliquit (my right hand) and Andri Eigenberger (my beloved aunt) for their huge efforts in bringing this task to life.

Vincenzo Sinisi