Cecilia (Mia Farrow) is a woman caught in an abusive marriage to her husband, Monk (Danny Aiello). To escape the real world she lives in, she goes to the movies every day, seeing the same film over and over, "The Purple Rose of Cairo". One day, one of the characters from the film, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), literally steps off the screen and into the real world. He and Cecilia begin a whirlwind romance, causing chaos for the other characters left on the screen that Baxter abandoned as well as chaos for the actor in the "real" world who portrayed Baxter, Gil Shepherd (also Jeff Daniels). When Shepherd enters Cecilia's life as well, she must choose between the real world and the idealized one on screen.