Richie Tenenbaum
“I think we're just gonna have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that, Richie.”
Former tennis prodigy Richie Tenenbaum is—on paper, anyways—perhaps the least eccentric of the Tenenbaums. But he is surely the most disastrously emotional, having thrown away his career to drink bloody marys alone on a cruise in a sea of heartbreak. He’s forever stuck in limbo between his past and present, unable to let go of the failed vision of what his life what supposed to be. Margot created worlds for him when they were young, and he doesn’t know how to build a new one for himself as an adult.
He’s a stoic shell around a ticking time bomb built of unrequited love and a lifetime best summarized by his own quote about his father: “I think he’s very lonely. Lonelier than he lets on. Maybe lonelier than he even realizes.”
