At the beginning of the film, Alex (Hugh Grant) is a washed-up former pop star who is attempting to revive his dwindling career by hitching his name to the rising star of Cora Corman (Haley Bennett), a young megastar who has asked him to write a song titled "Way Back Into Love." During an unsuccessful attempt to come up with words for the song, he discovers that the woman who waters his plants, Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore), has a gift for writing lyrics. Sophie, a former creative writing student reeling from a disastrous romance with her former English professor Sloan Cates (Campbell Scott),...