Summary

• Beautiful Boy is a faithful adaptation of the real story of a family's struggle with drug addiction, capturing the emotional truth.
• Timothée Chalamet's portrayal of active addiction is praised, despite some condensed timelines in the film adaptation of Nic Sheff's life.
• Nic Sheff's journey from addiction to sobriety, including struggles with bipolar disorder, is depicted accurately, showcasing the family's resilience.

The following article contains discussions of drug abuse and addiction.

The 2018 tear-jerking drama Beautiful Boy is a powerful look into a family's struggles to deal with narcotics addiction, and it may have led some viewers to wonder, "Is Beautiful Boy a true story?" Directed by Felix van Groeningen, Beautiful Boy tracks the relationship between father David Sheff (Steve Carell) and his son Nic (Timothée Chalamet). Nic is a brilliant but troubled teen at the start of the movie who becomes addicted to drugs to the detriment of his future. It's only his family's patient love and assistance that ends up saving him.

It's Carell's performance is one of the best of his career, even if it is not as central as Chalamet's. And their characters are anything but fictional.

Beautiful Boy Is Based On Two Memoirs By David & Nic Sheff

Nic's Drug Addiction Lasted For A Decade

Beautiful Boy is taken from David Sheff's memoir Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction and Nic Sheff's Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines, which are essentially opposite sides of the same coin. For the most part, Beautiful Boy is a faithful adaptation of the real story, according to Nic and David's s. Crucially, the emotional truth of both stories is kept intact, so even minor changes don't detract. In a symposium with ColoradoHealth, David even said the film succeeds in, "[capturing] the emotion of what it is like."

One of the few major structural changes is that the timeline of events in the Beautiful Boy film is much more condensed than the real story.

One of the few major structural changes is that the timeline of events in the Beautiful Boy film is much more condensed than the real story. Nic actually struggled with addiction to narcotics for a decade, whereas the movie makes it seem like his path from addiction, recovery, relapse, and then recovery again was only within a few years. Beautiful Boy does attempt to depict the age of time with four different actors playing Nic at different periods in his life (Kue Lawrence, Jack Dylan Grazer, Zachary Rifkin, and Chalamet).

Despite the condensed timeline, Nic Sheff was still pleased with the accuracy of the depiction, saying in an interview with StudioCanal UK,

"Timothée, he's been able to capture sort of the essence of what I went through, and I think honestly, it's one of the best portrayals of active addiction I've ever seen on screen."

Beautiful Boy Leaves Out Instances Of Sex Work In Nic's Life

Nic Made Money From Sex Work While Living On The Street

Beautiful Boy does show Nic stealing to get money for his drug addictions, but in real life, Nic found other avenues to pay for his lifestyle. He's very open about participating in sex work while living without a home to make ends meet and buy more drugs. Sex work was a specific choice for Nic, who told Out Magazine,

"I mean, don't get me wrong, I needed the money. But, more than anything else, I wanted to feel beautiful. I could've made money in other ways. Prostitution was something I wanted to do."

Apparently, it was a similar story for other people his age living on the streets who engaged in sex work, Nic says,

"I'm telling you, a lot of the kids I met were just like me. They wanted to feel like I wanted to feel. They wanted to feel wanted."

In the film, how sex work intersects with homelessness and addiction is communicated by way of a fictional character who David asks to lunch. He wants to know more about what his son is doing living unhoused, and if there's any information David can glean that will help his son. It's still an effective scene, but it doesn't tell the whole truth.

Nic Dropped Out Of Berkeley

Beautiful Boy Has David Pull Nic Out Of School

The events of Nic's first year in college in real life and Beautiful Boy are slightly different, but their results and significance in Nic's life going forward are the same. In the movie, Nic attends UC Berkeley and relapses there. When he returns home, David realizes something is wrong, but it isn't until the spring semester that he can convince his son to take a leave from school and attend rehab at Ohlhoff Recovery in San Francisco.

The real story is, of course, much more believable, but it's a good change for Beautiful Boy, letting David have more active participation in his son's recovery and giving the character a brief win in a film filled with many losses.

In reality, Nic dropped out after three months at Berkeley after he began dealing crystal meth to fund his returned addiction. When David encouraged Nic to go to rehab David could not force his son to go, as he was an adult at 18), Nic disappeared for a week but then did eventually go off to rehab. The real story is, of course, much more believable, but it's a good change for Beautiful Boy, letting David have more active participation in his son's recovery and giving the character a brief win in a film filled with many losses.

Vicki Sheff-Cahan, Nic's Mother, Is Also A Journalist

Vicki, Played By Amy Ryan, Is A Minor Character In Beautiful Boy

Vicki Sheff-Cahan and David are divorced in both real life and Beautiful Boy, but the real Vicki was a much bigger part of the story. Vicki is also a writer, like her ex-husband and her son (via The Hollywood Reporter). When Beautiful Boy came out, Vicki wrote a piece for People telling her story to complete the family's trilogy, writing,

"At first, I couldn’t bear reliving the past, but when I disappeared into the film, gratitude kept bringing my mind back to the present: that my beautiful boy was next to me, holding my hand! That Nicolas was there — at all — was nothing short of a miracle."

The film does not completely excise Vicki, played by Amy Ryan. She's present when she and David agree to send Nic to her home in LA, where they believe a fresh start may help. She doesn't have a lot of screen time, but her and David's relationship in the movie does accurately portray the concerned and cooperative relationship that Vicki says she and her ex-husband have always shared after their marriage ended, particularly when it came to Nic.

Nic Takes Medication To Manage His Bipolar Symptoms

Nic Sheff Has Been Diagnosed As Bipolar And Is Treating It After Years Of Refusing To

It's never mentioned in the movie, but Nic was diagnosed as bipolar in 2003 (via Salon). However, he refused to take medication, concerned about ing the pharmaceutical industry. Nic's friends with bipolar stayed sober while on their medication, while Nic continually relapsed. Nic doesn't put the blame squarely on the shoulders of his bipolar disorder but says that it made staying sober much more difficult.

Nic eventually began taking medication after reading his father's memoir. It was with that book and after five trips to rehab that Nic decided he would do whatever the doctors told him to get sober, including taking a regimen of anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic medication. He now thanks medication, meditation, and a 12-step program for helping him remain drug-free.

Beautiful Boy Leaves Out Two Medical Emergencies With David And Nic Sheff

Nic Nearly Lost His Arm And David Suffered A Brain Hemorrhage

With the dire circumstances of Beautiful Boy, Felix Van Groeningen probably realized what many directors of movies about drug use do, that the audience has only so much capacity for increasingly tragic events, which may be part of the reason why he didn't include Nic's near amputation or David's brain hemorrhage in the film. David wrote in The Guardian about how Nic nearly lost his arm after it had become infected from IV drug use.

Nic says this incident was moved from the movie for its similarity to Harry's fate at the end of Requiem for a Dream and the filmmakers were worried it would glamorize or sensationalize Nic's story (via FlickDirect). David's hemorrhage was even more tragic, occurring during his time writing the memoir, and it sent Nic spiraling into another relapse (via NYT). This hemorrhage was nearly a major setback, but David discusses in the epilogue of his memoir how it also reminded him that he needed to take care of himself as well as Nic.

Where Nic & David Sheff Are Now

Nic Is A Successful Writer And Sober And David Does Public Speaking Events

Since their family struggles, Nic and David Sheff have gone on to lead full lives. Nic married Jette Newell in 2011 and the couple, who went to middle school together, now live in Los Angeles, near Nic's younger siblings (via Datebook). Nic has written for television shows, including episodes of The Killing and Recovery Road. He also produced and wrote 13 Reasons Why for Netflix. Additionally, Nic haswritten five books: three memoirs, including Tweak and one co-written by his father, and two fiction books.

Nic Sheff's fiction books are Schizo (2014) and Harmony House (2016), both of which feature drug use and addiction as central themes.

After Beautiful Boy, David Sheff continued doing what he does best, writing. His articles can still be found in places like the New York Times. He currently lives in Northern California with his family where he writes and frequently makes speaker appearances on topics regarding substance-use disorders and mental illness (via David Sheff). He's even spoken at the United Nations. It's a happy ending for a family who, for a long time, struggled through the worst.

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