A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American biographical drama film based on the life of John Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics. By the age of 22, gifted mathematician John Nash, played by Russell Crowe (nominated for an Oscar for his role), had already completed a doctorate at Princeton and went on to join the staff of MIT. His seminal thesis “Non-cooperative Games” was an influential part of his work on the mathematics of game theory, for which he would receive the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 — but not before his illness became too much to deal with and forced him to resign from his professorship in the 1950s. The film was directed by Ron Howard and stars Russell Crowe, along with Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly.
