Overview

Based on the Philip Roth novel, the film follows Anthony Hopkins' character, Coleman Silk, a light-skinned African-American professor who has lived his professional life under the pretense of being Jewish. When he calls some of his absent students "spooks," he gets caught up in a racial controversy that leads to the revelation of his affair with a woman half his age, Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman). Even as he's getting professionally and personally discredited, Silk hangs on to the secret of his race.