The Weiss family are an archetypical Hollywood dynasty - Dr Stafford Weiss (John Cusack) is a psychotherapist whose self-help books have made him a fortune. His wife Cristina (Olivia Williams) is the overbearing mom-ager of their thirteen-year old son, Benjie (Evan Bird), a prodigious child star fresh out of drug rehab, and their estranged daughter Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) has recently been released from a psychiatric hospital. Agatha is now back in Hollywood making friends with a wannabe actor named Jerome (Robert Pattinson), and has landed a new job as PA to one of Stafford’s clients - the neurotic and tempestuous actress Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore), whose dream of reprising her dead mother’s starring role from the 1960s is beginning to haunt her.