Sometime in the future, frequent dust storms ravage the Earth, crops are destroyed by blight, and the human population has plummeted. Cooper, a farmer who once flew for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), lives with his son Tom and daughter “Murph,” and their grandfather, Donald, the father of Cooper’s deceased wife. At a parent-teacher conference, Cooper learns that Tom did not score high enough to be considered for college. The principal recommends the boy go into farming, and reminds Cooper that only a handful of students are granted admission to college. Murph’s teacher, Ms. Hanley, informs Cooper that his daughter brought an outdated textbook to school to discuss NASA’s lunar landings. She insists Murph stick to the new textbook, which states that the United States faked the moon missions to bankrupt Russia. Cooper is incensed by the school’s revisionist history, and argues that better education is needed for human survival. He blames his wife’s death on a lack of properly trained doctors, stating that if her tumor had been detected earlier, she would have lived. Back at the farm, Cooper finds several unmanned combine harvesters that have moved from the fields to his driveway. He attributes the phenomenon to a magnetic pull. Later, Cooper’s family must evacuate from a baseball game when a dust storm hits. Murph forgot to close her window before leaving the house, and finds dust pouring into her bedroom. Cooper shuts the window and notices the dust settling in a distinct pattern on the floor. Murph believes a ghost has been haunting her room and suggests the pattern is a communication, but Cooper believes it is caused by gravity. Determining that the thick and thin lines of dust are binary code, Cooper deciphers geographical coordinates. That night, he sets out to find the coordinates and Murph sneaks into his truck to accompany him. They arrive at a locked gate, where Cooper and Murph are taken into custody by TARS, an ex-Marine companion robot. Inside a secret compound, Dr. Amelia Brand introduces herself to Cooper and leads him to a conference room where he is reunited with Amelia’s father, Professor Brand, who worked with Cooper at NASA. Brand and his colleagues are stunned that Cooper found their hidden location, and Cooper refuses to explain how he obtained the coordinates. Pleased Cooper has found them, Brand informs him that NASA is still functioning, albeit with secret government funding. The professor discusses blight, which thrives off of nitrogen and will eventually deplete the Earth’s atmosphere of oxygen, causing humans to suffocate. His goal is to find a habitable planet in another galaxy in time to save humanity. Brand reveals the details of the Lazarus missions, in which twelve astronauts piloted solo missions to different planets in search of a new home for humankind. The astronauts were able to travel to another galaxy via a “wormhole” which connects vastly separated regions of space-time. Of the twelve missions, NASA has received promising data from three, piloted by scientists Miller, Edmunds, and Mann. Brand’s “Plan A” is to send the spacecraft Endurance to find which of those three planets is habitable, then launch the NASA compound, which will act as a space station, with the remainder of humankind. Brand is still working on an equation to harness gravity so he can launch the space station, but promises to have it done by the time the next mission is completed. In case Plan A fails, “Plan B” will entail repopulation on the new planet, via fertilized eggs. Brand asks Cooper to pilot Endurance, and he agrees. Back home, Murph refuses to speak to her father. Cooper begs for her understanding, believing he has been chosen. He explains that time will pass differently in space and gives Murph a wristwatch so they can compare watches when he returns. He admits that, due to relative time, they might be the same age when he gets back. After parting with his family, Cooper pilots a space shuttle carrying Amelia Brand, fellow astronauts Romilly and Doyle, and two robots, TARS and CASE. In space, he docks the shuttle on the Endurance, a space exploration vehicle that rotates at a rate high enough to create gravity. The astronauts begin their two-year journey to the wormhole, which is located outside Saturn, by climbing into “cryo-pods,” cryogenic chambers that allow them to go into deep sleep at low temperatures for years at a time. When they wake up two years later, they receive video messages from loved ones. Cooper watches videos from his son, Tom, and father-in-law, Donald, but none from Murph. When the wormhole appears outside the Endurance, Cooper marvels that it is a sphere. He loses control of the Endurance as it passes through the wormhole. They arrive in another galaxy and make plans to stop at Miller’s planet, which is the shortest trip but dangerously close to Gargantua, a black hole. Because of Gargantua’s pull, an hour on Miller’s planet will equate to seven years on Earth, so they must act quickly. Romilly stays behind on the Endurance, while Cooper, Amelia, and Doyle take the shuttle to Miller’s planet, which is covered in a shallow layer of water. Amelia and Doyle leave the shuttle to search for Miller’s data. However, a giant wave approaches and Cooper calls them back. Amelia is rescued by CASE, but Doyle is washed away by the wave. Cooper must wait to launch the waterlogged shuttle, and when they return to Endurance, an aged Romilly informs them that twenty-three years have passed. Cooper watches Tom’s video messages, informing him of Donald’s death, and the birth of Tom’s children. Cooper also receives one message from Murph, who has become Brand’s protégée at NASA. Murph tells Cooper she is now as old as he was when he left on the mission. With fuel running low, Cooper, Amelia, and Romilly must decide between the two remaining planets: Mann’s and Edmunds’s. Amelia recommends Edmunds’s planet, because it is further from Gargantua, but Cooper argues that Mann’s data is superior. Having discovered that Amelia is in love with Edmunds, Cooper says she cannot be objective. Amelia admits it is true, but argues that love is a powerful force, capable of transcending time and space, and she wants to follow her heart. Disregarding her, Cooper instructs CASE to chart a course to Mann’s planet. On Earth, Tom’s family subsists off the blight-resistant corn grown on their farm, and his son and wife suffer from a constant cough. At NASA, Murph sits with Dr. Brand on his deathbed. He admits there was never a Plan A, and that he sent Cooper on the mission knowing he would not be able to save his family. Meanwhile, landing on Mann’s frozen planet, Cooper’s crew finds Mann in cryo-sleep in a bunker. Upon waking, Mann cries tears of joy and says he thought he would die before he saw another human being. Mann explains there are sixty-seven hours in the days and nights on his planet, gravity is eighty-percent of the Earth’s, and there is breathable air at the surface. Although Mann’s robot, KIPP, has been dismantled, he discourages TARS from fixing it, saying it needs a human touch. Amelia receives a video message from Murph, announcing the death of Professor Brand. Unable to contain her outrage, Murph asks Amelia if she was aware that there was no Plan A, and wonders if her father knew he was leaving Murph to die. Cooper overhears, and Amelia promises him she had no idea. Mann says there was never a Plan A, because Brand’s gravity equation could not reconcile relativity and quantum physics without data from a black hole. Eager to return to his family, Cooper plans to set up a base camp at the surface, then fly the Endurance back to Earth. Cooper and Mann set out for the surface, but on the way, Mann admits his mission was a failure. He disconnects Cooper’s radio transmitter and pushes him over a cliff. While Cooper hangs on the side of the cliff, Mann announces plans to fly the Endurance to Edmunds’s planet, since his planet is uninhabitable. Cooper realizes Mann misrepresented his data in order to be rescued. On Earth, Murph returns to her old bedroom, desperate to solve Brand’s gravity equation. Meanwhile, Cooper struggles back up the cliff, but Mann head butts his helmet, causing it to crack and leak oxygen. Mann leaves Cooper to die, but Cooper reconnects his radio transmitter and calls for help. Amelia flies the shuttle to his location and rescues him. Cooper tells Amelia that Mann lied about his data, while, back in the bunker, Romilly attempts to fix KIPP but is killed when a bomb inside the robot explodes. Amelia, Cooper, and TARS fly back to the Endurance, but Mann pilots another shuttle and reaches the spacecraft first. He attempts to dock without authorization and opens an airlock hatch despite a faulty docking. The spacecraft goes into a rapid spin, and Mann floats to his death. Cooper is forced to dock by matching the Endurance’s spin. As they head toward Gargantua’s pull, Cooper determines that the only way to get to Edmunds’s planet on such low fuel is to harness Gargantua’s gravity. He charts a course to slingshot the spacecraft around the black hole. To lighten their load, TARS will disengage and fly into Gargantua to cull data for NASA. Without warning Amelia, Cooper disengages in another shuttle, leaving her to fly to Edmunds’s planet alone. Cooper goes into the black hole and loses control of his shuttle. He ejects from the craft and is sucked into a structure of light beams. Over the radio, TARS explains that five-dimensional beings have created this “tesseract,” a three-dimensional space, just for them. Cooper recognizes infinite versions of Murph’s childhood bedroom in the tesseract. Stuck behind the bookshelf on her wall, he realizes that he was the ghost communicating with Murph as a child, because the black hole allows him to transcend time and space. TARS obtains the quantum data Murph needs to merge with Brand’s gravity equation, and Cooper transmits the information, via Morse code, to the second hand on the wristwatch he gave Murph. At the same time, Murph sees the watch, realizes her father is the ghost, and tells Tom that Cooper is going to save them. Inside Gargantua, Cooper suggests to TARS that fifth-dimensional beings did not create this space but more intelligent humans from the future. Emerging from the black hole, Cooper floats outside Saturn before being rescued by other astronauts. He wakes up in a hospital on Cooper Space Station, named after his daughter. Cooper is told he is 124 years old, yet he still appears middle-aged due to the relative time in Gargantua. The next day, an elderly Murph is brought out of cryo-sleep to visit Cooper. In a tearful reunion between father and daughter, Murph urges Cooper to go to Amelia, who is alone on Edmunds’s planet, setting up a new world. Following his daughter’s advice, Cooper dons a space suit and climbs into a shuttle with TARS.