1. The film was originally called Untitled Marital Crisis Comedy.
2. In the movie, Emma Stone plays Hannah, a character in her twenties, while Analeigh Tipton plays Jessica, who’s 17. In real life the actors are only three days apart in age.
3. Analeigh Tipton became famous after coming third on Season 11 of America’s Next Top Model. While modelling she was almost sold as a bride to a Saudi prince.
4. In the movie, Tipton’s character, Jessica, gives nude photos of herself to the 13-year-old boy she babysits, which has proved controversial online.
5. Ryan Gosling found it challenging chatting up girls in the bar scenes. They’d often film as early as 8am, so he’d have to walk onto the bar set and yell chat-up lines at women as if there was music playing, even though the music was added later and the set was totally quiet.
6. Gosling read books about how to pick up women in preparation for the role.
7. Gosling admitted he thought the filmmakers probably used Photoshop to perfect his abs in the film.
8. Despite the fact that he did a lot of weightlifting to try and put on muscle for the movie.
9. When Gosling first moved to LA aged 17, he did a pilot with Steve Carell for a show called The Unbelievables. Gosling used to come to the set just to watch Steve Carell acting. Carell was so funny he’d stop production because people were laughing so hard they couldn’t shoot.
10. The romantic Dirty Dancing lift between Gosling and Stone wasn’t actually in the script. Gosling, who used to do ballet, had the idea and they added it in.
11. Emma didn’t realise until they were rehearsing that she had a phobia of being lifted high up. When Gosling lifted her into the air she had a full meltdown, which Gosling described as “like a possum falling out of a tree and trying to scratch your eyes out.”
12. Afterwards she ran away crying and had to lie in bed watching Labyrinth to calm down.
13. Her phobia came from when she was 7 years old and fell off the high bars in gymnastics and broke both her arms.
14. In the end they used a body double for the Dirty Dancing lift.
15. Although they did use the recording of Emma Stone’s real screams.
16. Gosling and Stone had natural chemistry in the film. For the scene where Hannah and Jacob lie in bed all night talking, the filmmakers threw away the script, gave Stone and Gosling some drinks, and let them improvise the whole thing. The filmmakers would shout out scenarios and the actors would just make up stories.
17. The screenwriter, Dan Fogelman, based the film on his own experiences of being a single man in his thirties.
18. Fogelman wrote the script with Steve Carell in mind as the lead.
19. Ryan Gosling’s character Jacob’s incredible apartment in the movie was filmed at the Skyline Residence in the Hollywood Hills.
20. The mall where Jacob gives Steve Carell’s character Cal a makeover is the Westfield Century City Mall in LA.
21. As a little girl Emma Stone hated her freckles, but as she got older she fell in love with them and wanted more. She said that she would sit in the sun trying to get more freckles, and Julianne Moore would tell her to put sunscreen on.
22. Emma Stone loved working with Ryan Gosling so much that she said she wanted to work with him again in as many movies as she could, so that they’d become a legendary pairing like Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
23. So far, Gosling and Stone have played a couple in three films: Crazy, Stupid, Love; Gangster Squad; and La La Land.
24. At the time he made the film, Gosling said his soulmate was his dog George, who he’d been with for 11 years. Gosling said it was the longest relationship of his life.