Movie Facts

What's up movie nerds! Here it is, a mass of interesting facts about your favorite movies that you can pass off to your friends, or use them to beat everyone during trivia night at your local pub. Movie trivia is endlessly fascinating and bound to help you score points, since tales of amusing prop malfunctions that made movies better, to strange behind-the-scenes stories. We've done the heavy lifting and picked up from thousands of film facts to surface the most interesting tidbits. The list features nuggets about cult classics, box-office blockbusters, superhero movies and more. How many did you know?


Fight Club


When filming "Fight Club" (directed by David Fincher) Brad Pitt voluntarily chipped pieces of his frontal tooth down because he thought it would suit his character, a man who creates a club to fight recreationally with other guys. He got them restored.

Gone with the wind


For the movie "Gone with the wind" it took 1400 women to be interview to get the part of Scarlett O'Hara. Eventually, actress Vivien Leigh got the part, although she almost lost it due to her British accent.

China Town


Jack Nicholson was dating Angelica Houston when filming China Town, daughter of John Huston, his on screen nemesis. Actually, she was present the day that her father asked Jake Gittes "Did you sleep with my daughter?"

Almost Famous


The cast of Almost Famous rehearsed for four hours a night, for six weeks, so they could credibly portray the rock band "Stillwater". In fact, Bee Gees' Peter Frampton taught Billy Crudup how to play the guitar

Snakes on a plane


Samuel L. Jackson signed up for Snakes on a plane because of its title. In fact, the studio tried to change the name to "Pacific Air Flight 121", but he asked personally to have the title changed back.

Jurassic Park


The dinosaur sounds in Jurassic Park are made from scratch, of course, since nobody knows how they sounded like. What we didn't know is that the raptor sound is in fact...a mad goose.

Princess Mononoke


When Princess Mononoke producers wanted to edit it to make it as commercial as possible, he received a katana from the director Hayao Miyazaki with a simple message "No cuts."



In Iron Man movies, J.A.R.V.I.S (voiced by Paul Bettany) is an acronym for "Just A Rather Very Intelligent System.". The name comes from Stark's former butler, Edwin Jarvis.

Hunger Games


Josh Hutcherson in order to prepare himself for his role as Peeta read the entire Hunger Games saga in five days! In fact he says he clicked with the role the minute after he read the books.

Harry Potter


Daniel Radcliffe used 160 pairs of prop glasses while filming the Harry Potter series It should be no surprise that he took home two pairs of them, one from the first movie and one from the last one.



The famous scene in Alien when the monster comes out of John Hurt's stomach was a a shocking surprise for the actors, since they weren't told what was going to happen.

James Bond


Brits take their fashion seriously. James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan was not allowed to wear a full tuxedo by contract in any non-James Bond movie from 1995 to 2002.

The African queen


During the production of The African Queen, Katherine Hepburn drank nothing but water as a protest against John Huston and Humphrey Bogart's alcoholism. Eventually, almost the entire cast and crew got water poisoning except two of them…Bogart and Huston, since they only drank whiskey.

The Hangover


Speaking of dental issues Ed Helms' tooth is actually missing since he was a teenager, so during the production of The Hangover, he got the permanent implant removed by his dentist.

Nut Room Scene


Charly and the Chocolate Factory's director Tim Burton had Forty squirrels trained to crack nuts during the Nut Room scene, instead of using CGI. He didn't want to take any shortcuts, since he wanted it to be as real as possible. He had an animal trainer working with him for eight weeks.



The cast from Grease was actually much older than their characters. John Travolta (Danny) was 23, Olivia Newton-John (Sandy) was 28, Stockard Channing (Rizzo) was 33, Jeff Conaway (Kenickie) was 26, Michael Tucci (Sonny) was 31, and Kelly Ward (Putzie) was 20.



Christopher Lee (Saruman) was a huge Lord of the Rings die-hard fan even before shooting the movies. Not only he was the only one from the cast to ever met J. R. R. Tolkien, he read the books once a year since it was published until his death in 2015



Not all movies have a huge budget. In fact, Michael Myers' unforgettable mask in Halloween is a Captain Kirk mask that was purchased for two dollars and was altered for the film.

Better late than never


Do you feel bad about not getting your college diploma just yet? Don't worry, Steven Spielberg finished college in 2002 after a 33 year break. He used The Schindler's List for his student's film requirement



The movie industry was not left out during The Cold War. Soviets made their own version of The Hobbit in 1985. You can watch it on Youtube. It's worth the popcorn.



True love comes in all sorts of ways. Disney knows a thing or two about this. In fact, the voice actors of Mickey Mouse and Minnie from 1930's movies got married in real life.

Martin and Leo


Many directors are known for maintaining an actor through the years. Martin Scorsese got his wonder boy Leonardo Di Caprio for so many years that Hugo was the first production in twelve years not to feature him.

Poor Alfred


Walt Disney hated Alfred Hitchcock's movie Psycho so much, that he refused to allow him to film at Disneyland in the sixties. Walt felt Psycho was a "disgusting movie".

Peter Ostrum


Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory's actor Peter Ostrum, who portrayed the role of Charlie left the film industry after shooting the film and never came back. He works as a veterinarian now.

Scary House


The Conjuring is based on a true story. In fact, the real house the story is based on had eight generations of families in the house and some of them are known of dying in tragic accidents. Many people suggest that some of the spirits from the families never left

Learning to drive for the role


Fast and the Furious actresses Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster did not have their drivers' licenses or even learners' permits before shooting the movie. Jordana had to learn in New York, a challenging place to start

Django Unchained


When Leonardo DiCaprio was shooting Django Unchained he had a scene where he smashes his hand on the table, the actor accidentally crushed a glass with his palm and ignored it, staying in character. Tarantino actually used that scene in the final cut

Cute Boo


Monters, Inc Boo's real voice actress does justice to her lovely character. Mary Gibbs was a toddler back then and the crew couldn't get her to stay still and read the lines, so they let her play in the studio while following her with a mic.

The Final Joke


Heath Ledger went through a lot of inner work to play The Dark Knight's Joker. Michael Caine, who portrayed the role of Alfred, was so scared of him that he forgot his lines in the first scene they had to shoot together.

Clumsy Anna


Anne Hattaway's first role in The Princess Diaries has a scene where she trips and falls on the bleachers. That scene wasn't scripted, it was just a clumsy move by Anne, but the director liked it and kept it on the final cut.

The hateful eight


Kurt Russel accidentally broke an antique guitar from the 1800s while filming The Hateful Eight instead of a prop due to a miscommunication. In the final cut you can see Jennifer Jason Leigh scream afterwards.



Sylvester Stallone wanted the boxing scenes looked real in Rocky IV, so he told Dolph Lundgren to actually hit him. A punch to the chest left him in intensive care for eight days.

Destroy all the props: 2001


A Space Odyssey's director Stanley Kubrick sent to destroy all of the props and sets from the movie because he didn't want them to be used in any other science fiction films.

A very important lunch


A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Monster Inc. and Wall-E where originally ideas that came up during a lunch break at Pixar in 1994 with filmmakers John Lasseter, Pete Docter and Joe Ranft

Not a mafia movie


Paramount's producer Robert Towne wanted Francis Ford Coppola to make The Godfather at all costs even though the director was uninterested in the project. Coppola signed in when he decided to make it a film about American capitalism and not the mafia.



Stanley Kubrick called Stephen King almost every day at 3am to ask him questions about The Shining. According to King, one exchange had the director ask the author, "Do you believe in God?". When he said yes, Kubrick yelled "I knew it!" and hung up the phone down.

Nirvana Fiction


Courtney Love insists that the role of Lance, the heroin dealer in Pulp Fiction was offered to Kurt Cobain. Tarantino refuted this claim, saying he never even met the late Nirvana singer.

Thank you, Viggo’s son


Viggo Mortensen replaced Stuart Townsend at the last minute for Aragorn, that's a known fact, but the actor had no intention of joining the franchise of Peter Jackson until his son begged him to do it.

Reading for the first time


Francis Ford Coppola read passages from Heart of Darkness to Marlon Brando on the set of Apocalypse Now after learning the actor had never read the source material. The production was shut down for a week while Coppola read Brando the script out loud

Picky Sean


Sean Connery gets picky when it comes to accept roles. He turned down many parts in several movies, including The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, Indy IV and Blade Runner.

He’s not Batman


Bill Murray was on top of the list to be Batman until Tim Burton came on board and decided to go on a different direction. He was also close to get the part of Han Solo in the Star Wars movies, but George Lucas decided to hire Harrison Ford.

007 upbringing


James Bond's formative years were spent in Germany and France, these fact is revealed in the penultimate Ian Fleming 007 novel, You Only Live Twice. His parents were Scottish and Swiss

American Psycho


Christian Bale based some parts of his performance as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho on Tom Cruise after seeing an interview with the movie star. According to director Mary Harron, Bale said he saw "this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes".

Burning down bridges


The bridge blown up in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly by Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood was prematurely detonated by a Spanish Captain. After learning of his mistake he ordered his troops to rebuild the bridge, only for it to suffer another explosion once complete.

Pregnant Wonder Woman


Gal Gadot was actually five months pregnant while filming the reshoots for Wonder Woman. The film's director, Patty Jenkins said she didn't miss a beat: "She's pregnant during part of the movie, in a suit out in a field in the freezing cold in others". A real life Wonder Woman.

Mick Jagger


Anthony Burgess considered selling A Clockwork Orange movie rights to Mick Jagger with the intention of Jagger playing Alex and the rest of the Stones playing the other Droogs. Thank God that never happened.

The weird sisters


Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey from Pulp and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead were part of The Weird Sisters in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Jason Buckle (All Seeing I) and Steven Claydon completed the line up.

Breakfast club is cancelled


The Breakfast Club was supposed to have had sequels every ten years where the club reunites, but those plans were impossible to achieve since Judd Nelson and John Hughes hated each other.

Not CGI for Tobey


In Tobey Mcguires' Spider-Man movie there's a scene where Peter Parker rescues Mary Jane and her lunch when she slips in the cafeteria. That scene was not a result from CGI. It was all Tobey's. They used sticky glue stuff to stick his hand to the tray

Who run the world? Ripley!


Ripley from Alien was supposed to be a male character initially. She was then made a woman because audiences at the time would not expect the lone survivor to be female.

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