With the rise of TV shows like Million Dollar Listing, real estate agents are now being thrust into the limelight in leading roles.
However, Hollywood has a long history of highlighting the role of an agent with both heroes and villains featured as real estate agents on the big screen.
Here are some of the most notable Hollywood real estate agents in history as recently featured on Inman.
1. Date Night (2010): Claire Foster
Claire and Phil Foster (Tina Fey and Steve Carell) are an everyday couple from the suburbs who, thanks to a case of mistaken identity on their date night, get caught up in the world of mafia bosses and corrupt cops.
Claire is also a real estate agent, and early in the film she is busy trying to show a couple through a home after seeing the price get dropped by $300,000 from $1.8 million.
2. I Love You, Man (2009): Peter Klaven
I Love You, Man follows Los Angeles-area agent Peter Klaven, played by Paul Rudd, as he tries to find male friends in the lead up to his wedding.
Eventually, Peter Klaven does make a new friend (Jason Segel), who secretly attempts to win Rudd’s business.
Luckily everything works out in the end and Rudd holds a number of home opens and battles with his coworkers.
3. American Beauty (1999): Carolyn Burnham
Annette Bening plays Carolyn Burnham in American Beauty, the second and more prominent real estate agent in the story.
Bening’s performance captures a delicate balance between forced relentless ambition and suppressed desperation in the real estate industry.
4. Fantastic Mr Fox (2009): Stan Weasel
Wes Anderson’s first stop motion animation feature sees George Clooney’s Foxy Fox decide he and his family need to move out of their fox hole and into a more impressive home in a tree.
They work with real estate agent Stan Weasel — an actual weasel — who is voiced by Anderson.
Weasel shows Fox a house and clearly knows his stuff, running through a long list of features that include an “original dirt floor,” “good bark” and a “skipping stone” hearth.
5. Beetlejuice (1998): Jane Butterfield
Spooky comedy Beetlejuice begins when real estate agent Jane Butterfield, played by actress Anne McEnroe, come to Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis’ characters with an unsolicited offer to buy their house.
Davis and Baldwin’s characters reject the offer, but soon die and Butterfield ends up selling the home anyway.
6. Tom and Jerry (2021): Real estate rat
The 2021 adaptation of Tom and Jerry shows the titular mouse, Jerry, searching for an apartment with a rat who happens to be a real estate agent.
The rat goes unnamed on screen, but in the credits is identified as “real estate rat.” The part is small, but long enough to show the character as a scruffy figure who knows what he’s doing.
7. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992): George Aaronow
George Aaronow, played by Alan Arkin, is the least prominent of the four competing agents in Glengarry Glen Ross.
But given that everyone else is making all sorts of professional and ethical errors, less screen time is probably a good thing.
8. American Beauty (1999): Buddy Kane
American Beauty features two agents in prominent roles, the less significant of which is Peter Gallagher’s Buddy Kane.
Though Kane is a supporting character, the audience does learn that he’s the biggest name in local real estate and that he’s separating from his wife because he’s too focused on his career.
9. The Descendants (2011): Brian Speer
Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard) is the closest thing The Descendants has to an antagonist and is a real estate agent who had an affair with the wife of the film’s protagonist, George Clooney’s Matt King.
10. 40 Carats (1973): Ann Stanley
In 40 Carats, Ann Stanley (Liv Ullmann) is a New York real estate agent who strikes up a fling with a much younger man while on vacation in Greece.
Later, she returns to New York, and her work with high-end clients in Manhattan.
