Boy Erased
2018 film directed by Joel Edgerton

Boy Erased is a 2018 biographical drama film based on Garrard Conley's 2016 memoir. It was written and directed by Joel Edgerton, who also produced with Kerry Kohansky Roberts and Steve Golin. The film stars Lucas Hedges as Jared Eamons, a fictionalized version of Conley, the closeted gay son of Baptist parents (portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe), who is forced to take part in a conversion therapy program. Edgerton, Joe Alwyn, Xavier Dolan, Troye Sivan, Cherry Jones, and Flea also appear in supporting roles.
Boy Erased premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 1, 2018, and also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film was theatrically released in the United States on November 2, 2018, by Focus Features and grossed over $12 million worldwide. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who mostly praised the performances of the cast, and received various award nominations, including two Golden Globe Award nominations: Best Actor for Hedges and Best Original Song for "Revelation". The film won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film – Limited Release at the 30th GLAAD Media Awards.
Plot
Jared Eamons is the son of Marshall Eamons, a car dealer and Baptist preacher in Arkansas, and Nancy Eamons, a hairdresser. He begins his first day at the Love in Action gay conversion therapy assessment program in Memphis, Tennessee.
The public source identifies “Boy Erased” as 2018 film directed by Joel Edgerton. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Erased, film and directed.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q39659543. VIAF identifies the subject as 5411154801952256310009. 2 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 6 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Boy Erased” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.