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● Movie Guide · Last updated May 18, 2026

Interstellar: Plot, Cast, Ending & Where to Watch

2014 · United Kingdom · Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction · 2h 49m · English

Interstellar is a 2014 United Kingdom adventure film directed by Christopher Nolan. This guide covers the plot, full cast, an overview of the ending, where to watch, and similar films you might want next.

Read Ending Explained → Movies Like Interstellar Where to Watch
AdventureDramaEditorial pick
Original Title
Interstellar
Director
Christopher Nolan
Writers
Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
Country
United Kingdom
Runtime
2h 49m
Release
Nov 5, 2014
§ 01 Plot · 6 min read

Interstellar Plot Summary

Interstellar is a 2014 epic science fiction film directed by Christopher Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan Nolan. It features an ensemble cast led by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Michael Caine. Set in a dystopian future where Earth is suffering from catastrophic blight and famine, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through space in search of a new home for humanity.

● Quick takeaway

Interstellar (2014) is a United Kingdom adventure film, directed by Christopher Nolan, running 169 minutes. The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage. Stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. Critical reception: IMDb 8.7/10, Rotten Tomatoes 73%, Metacritic 74/100. Tagline: "Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.." This guide covers the plot, full cast, ending, and where to watch.

§ 02 Cast · 6 roles

Cast and Characters

Matthew McConaughey headshot
Matthew McConaughey
as Cooper
Carries the film's emotional core as a widowed pilot-turned-farmer whose competence is constantly being negotiated against grief. McConaughey gives the slingshot scene and the twenty-three-years-of-video-messages scene the same registered weight, which is part of why the third act lands at all. His drawl is used as a deliberate counter to the film's institutional dialogue — every time NASA speaks in equations, Cooper translates the equation into something a daughter could understand.
Anne Hathaway headshot
Anne Hathaway
as Amelia Brand
Builds Amelia as a scientist whose argument for Edmunds's planet is initially dismissed as emotional bias and is ultimately the only correct call in the film. Hathaway plays the cockpit speech about love as a dimensional artifact at a register just under conviction, so that when the third act vindicates her, the performance can be read backward as having been right all along. Her closing scene on Edmunds's world is largely wordless.
Michael Caine headshot
Michael Caine
as Professor Brand
Anchors the film's institutional voice as the NASA director who has been running a productive lie for decades. Caine's recitations of Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle into that good night' are doing double duty — they read as encouragement at the launch pad and as a confession on the deathbed. His final scene with Murph is the film's clearest argument that long-horizon thinking sometimes requires deceiving the people it is trying to save.
Jessica Chastain headshot
Jessica Chastain
as Murph (adult)
Inherits the role from Mackenzie Foy and has to sell a thirty-year arc — abandoned daughter, gravity-equation physicist, decoder of her own childhood ghost — in roughly an hour of screen time. Chastain plays the return to the farmhouse as a working scientist coming home to interrogate her own evidence, not as nostalgia. Her 'Eureka' is the moment the film's time loop closes, and she earns it with a stillness most third-act revelation scenes do not allow.
Casey Affleck headshot
Casey Affleck
as Tom (adult)
Plays the son who stayed — who took over the farm Cooper left behind and who quietly refuses to evacuate even as the dust gets into his family's lungs. Affleck gives Tom a stubbornness the film treats as both heroic and fatal; the radio messages he stops sending are the audience's clearest measure of how much time has passed in the Earth reference frame. His final break with Murph is one of the script's hardest scenes.
Wes Bentley headshot
Wes Bentley
as Doyle
The Endurance crewmember who dies on Miller's planet inside the first forty minutes of the mission's away-team sequence, swept away by a wave the away team mistook for a mountain range on the horizon. Bentley's job is to make Doyle's competence legible quickly enough that his death registers as a cost rather than a plot beat, and he does it largely with how he handles the lander's pre-mission checks.
§ 03 · Spoiler Zone · Read with care

Ending Overview

How does Interstellar end? Our spoiler-aware breakdown walks through the final act beat by beat — including the choices, motivations, and ambiguous final shot that viewers most often debate.

Read full Ending Explained →
§ 04 Watch · Updated May 18

Where to Watch Interstellar

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Amazon Video
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§ 06

Frequently Asked

What is Interstellar about?

The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.

Where can I watch Interstellar?

See the Where to Watch section below for the current streaming, rental, and purchase options in your region.