Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) had three children -- Chas (Ben Stiller), Richie (Luke Wilson) and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) -- and then they separated. Chas started buying real estate in his early teens and seemed to have an almost preternatural understanding of international finance. Margot was a playwright and received a Braverman Grant of $50,000 in the ninth grade. Richie was a junior champion tennis player and won the U.S. Nationals three years in a row. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbuams was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.