The Beautician and the Beast is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by Ken Kwapis, written by Todd Graff, and starring Fran Drescher, Timothy Dalton, Lisa Jakub, Ian McNeice, and Patrick Malahide. It tells the story of a New York City beautician who is hired, under the false assumption that she is a science teacher, to tutor the four children of a dictator of a fictional Eastern European nation, played by Timothy Dalton. The film deals with the theme of cultural differences, and takes inspiration from other stories like Beauty and the Beast, The King and I, Evita, and The Sound of Music. Produced by Drescher's company High School Sweethearts in partnership with Paramount Pictures, The Beautician and the Beast was her first starring role in a film. Drescher chose Graff to write the screenplay because of his familiarity with her style of humor. She pitched and sold the project as a vehicle to transition her career in television to film. Filming took place during the fall of 1996 in Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, California, and Sychrov Castle in the Czech Republic. Kwapis consulted with dialect coach Francie Brown to create the fictional language Slovetzian used in the film. Cliff Eidelman composed the soundtrack which features the London Metropolitan Orchestra. The Beautician and the Beast was released on February 7, 1997, to generally negative reviews. Critics panned the story as more appropriate for a sitcom rather than a feature film, and called it a poor example of the romantic comedy genre. Drescher and Dalton received mixed reviews for their performances; Drescher was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress. The Beautician and the Beast was a box-office bomb, grossing roughly $11.5 million against a production budget of $16 million. Plot The film opens with an animated sequence in which a prince awakens a princess with a kiss, though she rejects his romantic advances and runs away. The scene shifts to live action beautician Joy Miller, who teaches at a New York City beauty school. One of her students accidentally sets the classroom ablaze by igniting hair spray with a cigarette. She escorts her class and some caged animals to safety, prompting the New York Post to run a headline praising Joy as a hero. Ira Grushinsky, a diplomat from the Eastern European country Slovetzia, mistakes Joy for a science teacher after seeing a newspaper photo. He