15 Wholesome Behind-The-Scenes Movie Facts Guaranteed To Put A Smile On Your Face
Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder accidentally got married while filming Dracula in 1992 because the priest in the wedding scene turned out to be a real Romanian priest.
1.Adam Driver "saved" Ben Affleck's son's birthday while the two actors were filming The Last Duel (2019) together.
The sweet story goes that — while in the middle of filming the Ridley Scott epic — Ben hopped on a flight to make it to his son's (at the time) 8-year-old birthday party. He made it on time, however, the presents he got for his son, unfortunately, did not.
But — having heard it was Ben's son's birthday, and knowing his son was a massive Star Wars fan — Adam Driver took it upon himself to send over a bunch of Star Wars swag as gifts without telling the actor, including a card signed by none other than THE Kylo Ren.
"He opened the presents and I played him the video [which Adam recorded for him on set], and...Adam made me a hero to my kid. I will never, ever, ever, EVER forget it," Ben said. "It's a really good lesson in doing those small gestures because you never really know...it meant the fucking world to me!"
2.Mana Ashida, who played young Mako in Pacific Rim (2013), was embarrassed because she couldn't properly pronounce director Gulliermo del Toro's name on set, so they came up with an absolutely adorable solution.
Mana, who is Japanese, asked if she could call del Toro "Totoro-san" instead, as a reference to Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro (1988). The director agreed — because, ya know, he has a heart.
"The director is really kind to me, and told me to call him 'Totoro,'" Mana said. "It feels like he's really Totoro!"
3.Despite being absolute jerks to her in the movie, Danny Devito and Rhea Perlman took excellent care of Mara Wilson all while shooting Matilda (1996).
Mara's mother, Suzie, was in-and-out of hospitals with breast cancer while Mara was filming the movie, and Mara noted how her costars helped her: "Danny and Rhea would take me to the theater to see a play, or to the movies, or to just hang out at their house — things like that that was all usually done when my mother was in the hospital. It really did keep me distracted, and it really did keep me happy."
Suzie died shortly before the film's premiere, and the film was dedicated to her. "I felt so glad when I saw that in the credits, and I still feel happy when I see that now," Mara said. "I'm so glad that they did that."
4.Mary Gibbs, who voiced Boo in Monster's Inc. (2001), was so young at the time of recording, it was difficult to get her to say the lines properly — so production had to get creative.
They decided to, quite literally, follow her around with a microphone, recording everything she said. Then, in post production, they spliced what she said together, which is why a lot of Boo's dialogue — like most real children — is silly and nonsensical.
"I wasn't one of those kids that just auditioned to try to get in a bunch of movies. I was only three years old, and my dad just brought me in, originally just to draw and sketch," Mary said. "They followed me around with a microphone because they couldn't get me to sit still."
She also noted that, in order to get emotion, they'd ask her questions using a Cookie Monster puppet: "If [the director] wanted me to say 'Kitty' in a sad way, it'd be Cookie Monster asking me, 'How would that feel if you lost your cat?'"
5.While the final product may look as though it was done on purpose for ~romance~, they actually had to film in solely silhouettes for the "Something Good" sequence in The Sound of Music (1965) because Julie Andrews couldn't stop giggling.
Apparently, the lights above her and Christopher Plummer kept making very silly noises during the scene, which made her laugh.
"What happened was the carbons that were rubbing in the lamps began to moan and groan, and it seemed like a terrible comment on our acting," she said. "When Chris was saying, 'Maria, I love you' [the lights] would go 'Unnnnnnnnnngh.'"
"So we had lunch, came back, started up all over again, and Robert Wise [the director] said, 'I know what we'll do: I want you to walk into the silhouette, I'll shoot it at the door...then you can laugh all you like and it won't show," she said. "And immediately we shut up, and it was just fine."
6.Jamie Dornan would actively try to make Dakota Johnson laugh in order to lighten the mood during their intense sex scenes in the Fifty Shades of Grey series.
"There's some scenes where maybe they'll play music and they'll do wide shots of it, and it's the closest we get to sort of going for it all in one piece," Jamie said. "And my temptation is always just to try to make Dakota laugh."
"So, sometimes, if there's a moment when I'm meant to, like, orgasm, and I'll be like, 'Doo-doo-doo-dooly-doo!'" he said. "And if people don't [do that during orgasm], they should!"
7.In Labyrinth, the original baby who was set to play Toby kept crying at the sight of all of the puppets (can you blame them?!), so they were replaced with the son of the conceptual and costume designer for the film, Toby Fround, who was used to being around delightfully weird puppets!
However, just because he didn't cry didn't mean he didn't have a little embarrassing baby moment himself: "I had a diaper underneath [my outfit], but the diapers were far too bulky, so they created thinner diapers...which didn’t hold liquid. The first time I actually met David Bowie and sat on his lap, I peed all over him."
"He was a gentleman about it. He really was," Toby said. "At the time, he was an absolute rockstar and everything, but he was very genuinely nice about the whole situation, and we carried on afterward. We did the scenes together. But yes, I met the man and peed on him pretty quickly, maybe a couple times through the shoot. It was all to do with the diapers."
8.And, speaking of babies freaking out on set and being replaced with the babies of the people making the movie (specific, I know), they had to replace young Aurora in Maleficent (2014) with Angelina Jolie's young daughter, Vivienne, because all of the other young actors were too scared to go near her.
They attempted to use six children (yes, SIX) for the scene, but Angelina noted that all of them were basically like NOPE: "They went, 'She’s so scary!'"
"We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors. That’s not our goal for Brad [Pitt] and I at all," Angelina said. "But the other 3- and 4-year-old [actors] wouldn’t come near me. It had to be a child that liked me, and wasn’t afraid of my horns and my eyes and my claws. So it had to be [Vivienne]."
9.Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder may have actually gotten married on the set of Dracula (1992), and the story is seriously a rom-com in itself.
While doing the press tour for their 2018 movie, Destination Wedding, Winona revealed this long-held suspicion during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying: "We actually got married in Dracula. No, I swear to god I think we’re married in real life! In that scene, Francis [Ford Coppola] used a real Romanian priest. We shot the master and he did the whole thing. So, I think we’re married."
According to the interview, Keanu joked for a few moments before truly digesting this information. However, upon remembering that they both did, in fact, say "I do" in the scene, Keanu said, "Oh my gosh, we’re married!"
10.The hilarious "He's a friend from work!" line in Thor: Ragnarok (2017) was a suggestion from a child.
During the fight scene between Thor and The Hulk, Chris Hemsworth was playing around with how he wanted his character to react when he first sees his Avengers buddy appear — and the best possible suggestion came from a wonderful source.
"We had a young kid, a Make-A-Wish kid on set that day," Chris Hemsworth said. "And he goes, 'You know, you should say, 'He’s a friend from work!'" Well, Hemsworth DID say it, and the line not only made it into the movie — it was the big closing line for the movie's first teaser trailer!
11.While we're talking about Marvel, Zendaya and Tom Holland's height difference caused them to regularly goof up a Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) stunt in the most precious way possible.
"There's a stunt where Spider-Man swings me on top of a bridge and he places me there. So he's supposed to gently rest M.J. on the bridge and walk away from her," Zendaya said. "Because of our height difference — we were attached [by a harness] — I'd land before him."
"So Zendaya would land," Tom said. "And I'm the superhero. I'm supposed to look cool. And she would land, and I would sort of land like this, and she would catch me...it's so nice to be caught for a change!"
12.Tom Felton's candy-sneaking on the set of the first two Harry Potter films forced the wardrobe department to sew ALL of the students' pockets shut by the time they got to The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004).
"The robes had these huge pockets. The rumor was that they sewed them up after the third film because I was sneaking food and drink onto set," Felton said. "I want to clear this up because that is absolutely TRUE."
"I think the other kids started following suit," Felton concluded. "Wardrobe would put their hand in and find chocolate and sweets."
13.Also, while we're talking about The Prisoner of Azkaban, Alan Rickman and Michael Gambon played a prank on Daniel Radcliffe in front of a girl he liked.
"It was a bunch of sleeping bags and Dan asked us to have his sleeping bag next to this particular girl that he fancied," director Alfonso Cuarón said.
"They had put a fart machine in my sleeping bag," Daniel said. "And Michael had actually been pressing it during the take, I found out."
14.None of the 300 horses used during the filming of The Lord of the Rings trilogy were harmed.
And Jane Abbott — the stunt double for Arwen (played by Liv Tyler) — loved riding Arwen's horse so much that Viggo Mortensen bought the horse for her so she could keep them at the end of production.
15.And finally: "You're going to need a bigger boat" was an inside joke made up during the filming of Jaws (1975).
"[Richard] Zanuck and [David] Brown were VERY stingy producers," story editor Carl Gottlieb said. "Everyone kept telling them, 'You’re gonna need a bigger boat.'"
"It became a catchphrase anytime anything went wrong," Gottlieb said. "If lunch was late or the swells were rocking the camera, someone would always say, 'You’re gonna need a bigger boat!'"
Then, actor Roy Scheider improvised the inside joke into the film at the perfect moment, and the rest is history: "It was so appropriate and so real and it came at the right moment, thanks to Verna Field’s editing."
What's your favorite wholesome behind-the-scenes movie fact? Share in the comments below!
