The ending of "Fatal Attraction" is hard to forget. After killing the family's pet rabbit, Alex attacks Dan's wife, Beth, with a kitchen knife. Dan tackles Alex and seemingly drowns her in the bathtub, but she improbably survives. Beth comes back with a revolver and shoots Alex in the chest, finally killing her. This, however, was not how the film was supposed to end. The original ending, of the film, as written by James Dearden, had Alex kill herself and frame Dan for murder.
But when they showed this ending to audiences, they hated it. According to studio executive Ned Tanen, audiences despised Alex so much "they want[ed] us to terminate the b*tch with extreme prejudice." So the studio demanded that the ending be changed to please the viewers. Close, as well as director Adrian Lyne and producer Sherry Lansing, hated the new ending. Lyne was persuaded to shoot it after he was offered $1.5 million, but Close was furious about the change and initially refused to shoot it, arguing that the change totally annihilated her character. She eventually gave in, though, and reshoots were filmed a full six months after the film initially wrapped. Many critics, such as Roger Ebert, categorically detested the new ending, so it seems that maybe Close was right all along.
