Synopsis for
Mulholland Dr. (2001) More at IMDbPro »

Along Mulholland Dr. above Los Angeles, an attractive brunette woman (Laura Elena Harring) rides in a limousine. Suddenly, the driver stops and the driver orders her out of the car at gunpoint. Before she can exit, a car driven by joy-riding teenagers, plows into the limo. The drivers are killed and, in a daze, the woman stumbles down the hillside and into Hollywood. She then falls asleep in the bushes in front of a nice but old apartment complex. The next morning, she sneaks into one of the apartments as its tenant, Ruth (Maya Bond), leaves by taxi with her luggage. Meanwhile, two police detectives at the scene of the accident realize that someone walked away from the accident and begin their search.

At a Winkie's restaurant, Dan (Patrick Fischler) tells Herb (Michael Cooke) about a frightening dream he has had involving an evil entity living in the alley behind the restaurant. Herb insists they investigate. As they reach the alley, a crone with charred or diseased skin lurches out at Dan, who collapses.

Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) arrives from Deep River, Ontario with hopes of making it big as an actress. Ruth is her aunt and is allowing Betty to stay in her apartment while she is away filming in Canada. When Betty arrives, Coco Lenoix (Ann Miller), the friendly building super, greets her and lets her in. Exploring the apartment, Betty finds the brunette cowering in the shower. Betty assumes the woman is a friend of her aunt's. The unknown woman is dazed and confused an just wants to sleep. The brunette woman explains that she had an accident, inspired by a movie poster, she takes the name Rita but admits she doesn't remember who she really is. Betty and Rita open Rita's purse and find thousands of dollars and a bizarre blue key. They hide these objects in a hat box and decide to solve the mystery of Rita's identity together.

Filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) is in a meeting with his agent, two producers and the thuggish Castigliane brothers. The brothers show a picture of an attractive blonde and order the filmmakers to cast Camilla Rhodes in the new film. Adam angrily leaves and smashes the brothers' limousine with his golf club. He then drives home and finds his wife Lorraine (Lori Heuring) in bed with the pool cleaner Gene (Billy Ray Cyrus). Adam and his wife fight, he takes her jewellery box with all her jewells and pours pink paint in. The three tussle and the muscular pool guy throws Adam out. Later, some goons appear at the house, looking for Adam. One of them beats up the wife and pool boy. Meanwhile, Adam goes to a low rent motel downtown. The proprietor, Cookie (Gino Silva), tells Alex that bankers called him to say that Adam was broke, a fact that is confirmed by Adam's assistant. She also tells Adam that "the Cowboy" (Lafayette Montgomery) wants to meet with him at a corral in Beachwood Canyon. At their meeting, the Cowboy tells Adam he must cast Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George in some scenes).

Elsewhere, Joe, a hit man (Mark Pellegrino), kills an acquaintance in order to confiscate a black address book. Because of his incompetence, he winds up having to kill two other people, a fat lady who sells healthy food in the next apartment (Diane Nelson) and a dumb cleaning clerk (Charles Croughwell). Also, he sets all the alarms on. Later, he tells a prostitute to be on the lookout for a brunette woman who recently went missing. Also, one of Coco's guests is Louise Bonner (Lee Grant) tells Betty that Rita is has a big problem coming on. Coco tells Betty that sometimes Louise can see what's going to happen, and that Ruth is very frightened, and also advises Betty to put Rita out.

Aunt Ruth has arranged for an audition for Betty. Betty does so well that the casting director immediately takes her to see Adam Kesher. They arrive at the studio and Betty and Adam make eye contact and seem to conenct. Adam listens to Camilla Rhodes sing and announces she has the role. Betty rushes back to Rita at the apartment as they had a plan to investigate. Rita remembered the name "Diane Selwyn" because a waitress had the same name, Diane, (Missy Crider) at the beforementioned Winkie's. and they look up her address in the phone book. But when they go to her apartment, they find a decomposing corpse in the bedroom. The body resembles Rita. Distraught, Rita tries cutting off her hair when she and Betty return home, but Betty persuades her to wear a blonde wig instead. That night, Betty and Rita make love. Betty tells Rita she is in love with her.

Rita wakes up speaking in Spanish and, despite the late hour, insists that Betty accompany her to Club Silencio. In her blonde wig, Rita looks like Betty. At the club, Rebekka del Rio (herself) lip synchs a Spanish version of Roy Orbison's "Crying." Betty and Rita, deeply moved, cry. Then Betty finds a blue box in her purse. She and Rita return to the apartment and take the key out of the hat box. Betty suddenly disappears, leaving Rita to open the box with the key. The box seems to swallow the bedroom, then drops to the floor. Aunt Ruth enters the bedroom looking as if she heard a sound, but it is empty of even the box. In Diane Selwyn's apartment, the Cowboy tells her it is time to wake up.

Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) wakes up in her bed, apparently from a dream in which she was Betty. She finds a normal door key, colored blue, on her coffee table. She then sees Camilla Rhodes (Laura Elena Harring) in the kitchen, and is overjoyed until she realizes it is a hallucination. Diane and Camilla were lovers who had met on the set of a film. Diane had wanted to play the lead but the role went to Camilla instead. Since then, Camilla had managed to secure small roles for Diane. But she was growing tired of the relationship and broke it off. Diane was devastated. Camilla's open flirtation with director Adam Kesher made the pain all the worse. The final humiliation came when Camilla invited Diane to a dinner party at Adam's house on Mulholland Dr. Camilla met Diane's limousine at the same spot where the accident would occur in Diane's dream and led her along a romantic secret path to the house. But once inside, Camilla kissed another woman -- Camilla Rhodes from Diane's dream -- and announced her engagement to Adam, in front of Coco, who happens to be Adam's mother.

Enraged, Diane hired Joe (Pellegrino) to kill Camilla. They met at Winkies, where Dan watched them. Behind the restaurant, the burnt crone fondled a box identical to the one in Diane's subsequent dream. Joe tells her that once he has completed the job, he will leave a blue key in her apartment -- the exact key that Diane has now found. With reason to believe that the police are closing in, and plagued by bizarre hallucinations, Diane commits suicide.

*****

As the film begins, a surreal image of people doing the jitterbug is shown. The sound of a cheering crowd accompanies a ghostly image of a young blonde woman and an old couple, all of whom are smiling (apparently before said crowd). The final image of the blonde woman waving dissolves into a point-of-view shot, with the camera panning over a bed and moving into a pillow. The scene then fades black and switches to a street sign"MULHOLLAND DR."illuminated by headlights. A young, dark-haired woman (played by Laura Harring) is being driven up Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles late at night. She is threatened by two men inside the car with a gun. Before they can kill her, however, their limousine is smashed into by a carload of drag racing teenagers. The nameless, dark-haired woman suffers from a head injury and subsequent amnesia. As the sole survivor of the crash, she wanders down the hillside into L.A., finds refuge behind some bushes, and falls asleep. The next morning she awakes and sneaks into a vacant apartment. A young and perky aspiring actress named Betty Elms (played by Naomi Watts), who has just arrived in Hollywood from Deep River, Ontario, moves in and discovers her in the shower. It is revealed that the apartment, which is part of a complex managed by a feisty older woman named Coco (played by Ann Miller), belongs to Betty's Aunt Ruth, who is away making a movie in Canada. The dark-haired woman sees a poster for the movie Gilda starring Rita Hayworth and decides to call herself "Rita". She tearfully admits to Betty that she has amnesia, and together the two of them try to piece together her identity. While going through Rita's purse for clues, they discover $50,000 in cash and an unusual blue key.

Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives in Los Angeles; pictured with Irene (Jeanne Bates)Strange, seemingly unrelated events follow. At Winkie's, a local diner, a man named Dan tells his companion Herb about a recurring nightmare involving a shadowy person living behind the restaurant. When Herb encourages Dan to confront his fear by exploring the rear parking lot, he encounters a terrifying figure and collapses from fright.

One subplot involves the efforts of shady film executives to strong-arm a young, arrogant director. The director, Adam Kesher (played by Justin Theroux) finds his latest project stolen by men who appear to be mobsters, who show him a headshot of an unknown blonde actress named Camilla Rhodes (played by Melissa George) and order him to cast her as the film's lead. When Kesher refuses, his life is turned upside down. Returning home, he stumbles upon his wife in bed with the pool cleaner (Billy Ray Cyrus), who beats him up and throws him out of the house. Kesher checks into a seedy hotel, upon which the manager informs him there is trouble with his credit cards. Kesher then receives a call from his female assistant who informs him he is out of money, and that the film's cast and crew have been let go. The assistant also passes on instructions summoning him to meet "the Cowboy" at a ranch just outside of L.A. Kesher, skeptical but compliant, arrives and finds a threatening man dressed as a cowboy. He tells Kesher that he must give the role to Camilla Rhodes to avoid further trouble. At the next casting call, the actress whose headshot he had seen, Camilla Rhodes, arrives and auditions. The casting director asks him if he has something to say, whereupon Kesher obediently declares, "This is the girl."

In another subplot, a bungling hit man steals a "black book" of names and addresses, leaving behind three dead bodies. He, along with two police detectives, are all trying to track down the dark-haired woman now known as "Rita".

Meanwhile, Betty goes to a Hollywood acting audition and performs brilliantly. She is then taken to a sound stage where she catches a glimpse of Adam Kesher, who has just caved in to the mobsters' demands by hiring Camilla Rhodes for his new picture. Betty abruptly flees from the sound stage to pick up Rita, following a clue to the apartment of a mystery woman named Diane Selwyn. This leads to their discovery of a rotting corpse, which is presumably a murdered Diane. Rita, fearing that the same people who harmed Diane are after her as well, decides to disguise herself by wearing a blonde wig. That night, Betty and Rita become lovers and sleep together.

Rita later awakens and insists that she and Betty attend a performance at an eerie midnight theater called Club Silencio, during which Betty begins shaking and both women cry uncontrollably. After Betty discovers a small blue box in her handbag, both women return to their apartment. Betty suddenly vanishes and Rita, finding herself alone, opens the blue box with the blue key from her purse.

An emotionally hurt Diane (Naomi Watts) exchanges words with Camilla (Laura Harring)After this, an entirely new reality suddenly emerges. Betty wakes up and finds herself a depressed and lonely failed actress named Diane Selwyn. While alone in her apartment, Diane appears to flashback to recent traumatic events. Her former lover, an actress named Camilla Rhodes (now played by Harring), has abandoned her to pursue a life of riches and glamour by marrying a successful director, the same Adam Kesher who appeared earlier in the film. Feeling betrayed and humiliated, Diane meets the same hit man from the previous reality at Winkie's diner and pays him thousands of dollars in cash to kill Camilla. After receiving confirmation that Camilla has been killed (by the appearance of an ordinary blue key) and now under police suspicion, the guilt-stricken Diane loses her mind, is terrorized by hallucinations, and shoots herself.