As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by James L. Brooks, who co-wrote it with Mark Andrus. The film stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic, bigoted, and obsessive–compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with a chronically ill son, and Greg Kinnear as an artist who is gay. The film premiered in Regency Village Theatre on December 6, 1997, and was released in theaters on December 25, 1997, and was a box office hit, grossing $314.1 million on a $50 million budget. Nicholson and Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively, making As Good as It Gets the most recent film to win both of the lead acting awards, and the first since 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. It was also nominated for Best Picture but ultimately lost to Titanic. It is ranked 140th on Empire magazine's "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time" list.[2]