Amanda Peet returns to film after a decade in Matthew Shear's 'Fantasy Life'

Amanda Preet, famous for her role as Dianne in Fantasy Life, who has been away from Hollywood for a decade, has been struggling with depression.

Peet candidly revealed that while promoting the film about not having had the career she thought she would when she first started in movies a couple of decades ago. That gives her casting an extra layer: she is playing a woman whose career has frozen while talking publicly about the gap between early expectations and where a screen career actually lands.

Matthew Shear wrote, directed, and appears in Fantasy Life, and the film leans into awkward chemistry instead of smoothing it over. Sam and Dianne develop instant and very inconvenient chemistry, which is the kind of friction a dramedy needs if it wants the romance to feel costly rather than decorative.

Judd Hirsch appeared as Dr. Finman, and the film gave Sam a line that lands on the psychological side of the story, “internalized antisemitism.” That phrasing signals that Fantasy Life is trying to do more than trade in neurotic New York texture; it is building its comedy around identity, therapy, and self-justification.

Fantasy Life opened in theaters throughout Israel on Thursday, giving the film a defined rollout even before any broader release question enters the picture. For readers tracking Peet, the immediate takeaway is simple: this is not a cameo or a throwaway part, but a central role built around a character whose depression, wealth, and decade-long absence from work drive the movie’s emotional engine.

Alessandro Nivola, Matthew Shear, and Judd Hirsch make the ensemble feel calibrated for a character-driven release, and Peet’s Dianne is the person the film keeps circling. That is the part worth watching first, a performer talking openly about her own career expectations while anchoring a role written around a woman who has spent 10 years off the job.

The role gave Peet a sharply observed part in an offbeat Jewish-American dramedy that moves between an upper-class Brooklyn neighborhood and Martha’s Vineyard.

Dianne is married to David, played by Alessandro Nivola, and the film treats that relationship as part of her stalled professional life rather than a separate subplot. She once had a promising career, but the 10-year gap in her work history makes the character’s return feel less like a fresh start than a late, uneasy restart.