Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is a bright and charismatic sociopath who makes his way in mid-50s New York City as a men's room attendant and sometimes pianist, though his real skill is in impersonating other people, forging handwriting, and running second-rate scams. After being mistaken for a Princeton student, Tom meets the shipping tycoon father of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), a young socialite who has traveled to the coast of Italy, where he's living a carefree life with his father's money and his beautiful expatriate girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). Dickie's father pays Ripley 1,000 dollars plus expenses to travel to Italy and pursuade his son to return to America, but neither Dickie nor his girlfriend suspect the dangerous extremes to which Ripley will go to make their lifestyle his own.