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    29 Surprising Things You Might Not Know About "The Addams Family"

    Cher wanted to play Morticia.

    1. The makeup team had to pull Anjelica Huston’s eyes upwards with glue and string so they looked slanted.

    2. As a result, she got daily headaches but couldn’t lie down to rest because she was wearing a painful metal corset to get Morticia’s tiny, tucked-in waist.

    3. The shoot was plagued by misfortune – the director Barry Sonnenfeld fainted, his replacement was rushed to hospital with an infection, the production company ran out of money, and Sonnenfeld’s wife was rushed to hospital for major surgery.

    4. Cher wanted to play Morticia, but producer Scott Rudin always had Anjelica Huston in mind.

    5. Danny DeVito and Bob Hoskins both turned down the role of Uncle Fester.

    6. Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, and David Lynch were all asked if they wanted to direct The Addams Family. They said no, so Barry Sonnenfeld became the director. He'd previously worked as director of photography for the Coen brothers.

    7. John Astin, who played Gomez Addams in the 1960s TV show, actually outlived Raul Julia, who played Gomez in the film. Raul Julia died in 1994. John Astin is still alive.

    8. Raul Julia was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1991, the year The Addams Family was released. The cast were moved by the scene where Gomez is on his deathbed singing, as they thought Julia would’ve already known he was sick at that point.

    9. Christopher Lloyd, who played Fester in the film (and Doc Brown in Back to the Future), shaved his head to be bald.

    10. Lloyd is 6'1", so he had to crouch down throughout filming to appear much shorter. This also gave him Fester's strange wobbling walk.

    11. Anjelica Huston’s makeup took at least three hours. Often the cast would need to be in the makeup chair at 4am each morning.

    12. When Anjelica Huston was a little girl growing up in Ireland, her family had a book of Charles Addams' original Addams Family cartoons in the bathroom.

    13. Huston used to pretend she was Morticia when she was 6 years old.

    14. Jimmy Workman, who played Pugsley, was scouted for the role when he accompanied his sister on an audition for Wednesday. The casting directors saw him playing and asked him to read for the part.

    15. Jimmy and Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday, had a lot of fun together on set, playing video games, skateboarding, and driving golf carts.

    16. Christina Ricci channelled Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice during her audition for the role of Wednesday.

    17. In the original script for the film, Uncle Fester was going to be revealed as an impostor. Christina Ricci pleaded with the filmmakers to change the storyline so that he was the real Fester with memory loss.

    18. It was Christina Ricci’s birthday during filming and the cast and crew gave her a bicycle.

    19. Thing’s full name is actually Thing T. Thing.

    20. Thing was played by Chris Hart, a Canadian magician.

    21. It took four months for Hart to shoot his scenes. They had to shoot every scene twice: first with Hart being wheeled around on a cart so his hand could run around, then again without him. Afterwards, they’d erase Hart’s body from each scene.

    22. As a magician, Hart was used to sitting still under a table for hours at a time, but his hand would go completely numb because all the blood drained out of it.

    23. The Addams mansion in the movie wasn’t a real house – the crew built the facade in an abandoned dump in California.

    24. Raul Julia and MC Hammer bonded while sword fighting during the music video for the theme tune, "Addams Groove".


    25. Anjelica Huston especially liked how flirtatious Morticia is. She said, “I don’t think it’s necessary for all good wives and mothers to be sexless.”

    26. The Cousin Itt wig weighed more than 35 pounds.

    27. Actor John Franklin, who played Cousin Itt, asked to read a monologue from Hamlet during his audition. When he delivered it in Cousin Itt gibberish, they offered him the part immediately through tears of laughter.

    28. Franklin had to wear a neck brace and skirt hoop to support the enormous Cousin Itt wig.


    29. The wig had a full time “wrangler” to look after it and stop it getting tangled.