Plot: 1981. In Britain, appearing in a stage production of "The Glass Menagerie" in Lancaster, fifty-eight year old Gloria Grahame Annette Bening), far past her prime as a Hollywood actress who perfected the portrayal of the "tart" in 1940 and 1950s movies, one which earned her an Oscar, contacts her former lover, thirty-year-old struggling British actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), who is also appearing on-stage in his hometown of Liverpool, when she has some medical distress, which she categorizes as extreme indigestion. She contacted Peter, who did not even know she was in Britain, despite the animosity that characterized their previous meeting a few months earlier. In bringing her to stay with him in his working class parents' flat, Peter and his family immediately realize that what she is suffering from is much more serious than indigestion. As they begin to care for her in Peter respecting her wishes neither to send her to a hospital nor to contact any of her family members in the U.S., Peter struggles between his love for her and wanting to respect her wishes versus the toll caring for her on their own is taking on him and his family. In the process, flashbacks are presented in key moments in Gloria and Peter's two year relationship, they first met when she moved into the rundown flat next to his in London where she was performing in a play. Gloria's personal history is also detailed, which includes four ex-husbands, four now-grown children, and her holding onto her youth with every fiber of her being with her last ex-husband being one of her stepchildren, hence Peter not the first younger man with whom she had a relationship.
Alternative Plot: Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame finds romance and happiness with a younger man, but her life changes forever when she is diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1970s.
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