1
The number of years younger than Cary Grant Jessie Royce Landis was when she played his mother in the Hitchcock classic North By Northwest.
1
The number of members of the cast of Dad’s Army to have served in the Home Guard (John Laurie).
1
The number of recipients of Golden Globe Awards for ‘Most Glamorous Actress’. Zsa Zsa Gabor won the award in 1958 but the category was cancelled afterwards.
1
The number of the cast (and crew) of the Lord of the Rings movies to have met J.R.R. Tolkien (Christopher Lee).
1
The number of soundtracks to out-gross the movie itself – Superfly (1972).
1
In The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Alec Guinness – who won an Oscar for his role – had his name spelt with just one ‘n’ in the final credits.
The number of animated Disney full-length features that have both parents present and alive throughout the movie (101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan).
2
The number of actors who turned down the role of Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army (Arthur Lowe was only cast after Thorley Walters and Jon Pertwee turned it down).
2
The number of times Hitler watched Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. He’d banned it but he was curious to see the film himself and so he had a print of the film smuggled into Germany from Portugal and watched it not once, but twice.
3
The number of patients to appear in each episode of Dr Kildare.
3
The number of fingers on each character’s hand in animated movies. A film animator explains: ‘In the early days of animation when everything had to be done by hand, animators would have to draw thousands of pictures and it was easier to do characters with three fingers instead of four. Also, you have to remember that animation was anyway a lot more basic in the beginning. They weren’t trying to achieve precision; just a general sense of a character.’
5
The number of times Francis Ford Coppola was fired while directing The Godfather.
The number of kilograms Natalie Portman lost to play Nina Sayers in Black Swan (2010).
9
In The Simpsons, Bart’s hair has precisely nine spikes.
9
The number of kilograms Beyoncé Knowles lost to play Deena Jones in Dreamgirls (2006).
13.6
The number of kilograms Edward Norton put on to play Derek Vinyard in American History X (1998).
13.6
The number of kilograms Matt Damon put on to play Mark Whitacre in The Informant (2009).
13.6
The number of kilograms Charlize Theron put on to play Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003).
13.6
The number of kilograms Taylor Lautner put on to reprise the role of Jacob Black in The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009).
15.87
The number of kilograms George Clooney put on to play Robert Baer in Syriana (2005).
The number of kilograms Tom Hardy put on to play Charles Bronson/Michael Peterson in Bronson (2008).
22
The Paramount logo contains 22 stars.
22.6
The number of kilograms Tom Hanks lost to play Chuck Noland in Castaway (2000).
22.6
The number of kilograms Jennifer Hudson lost to play Winnie Mandela in Winnie (2011).
24
The number of kilograms 50 Cent lost to play Deon in All Things Fall Apart (2011).
25
The number of pounds Peter Sellers was paid to provide the voices for the first PG Tips chimps’ TV commercial.
27
The number of kilograms Robert De Niro put on to play Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980).
28
The number of kilograms Christian Bale lost to play Trevor Reznik in The Machinist (2004), and then put double that back on to play Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins (2004).
The number of kilograms Russell Crowe put on to play Ed Hoffman in Body of Lies (2008).
31.75
The number of kilograms Vincent D’Onofrio put on to play Private Leonard ‘Gomer Pyle’ Lawrence in Full Metal Jacket (1987).
45
The length in centimetres of the model of the ape in the 1933 film King Kong.
47
The number of piglets used in the filming of Babe.
50
The number of hard-boiled eggs eaten by Paul Newman’s character in Cool Hand Luke.
67
The number of years the actor David Manners lived for after co-starring with Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film Dracula without ever watching it.
73
The number of performers nominated for an Oscar in their (screen) debut role.
79
The number of original Star Trek episodes. In the pilot, The Cage, the Captain (Captain Pike) was played by Jeffrey Hunter. When the TV series got the go-ahead, Hunter declined to be in it (rumour has it that his wife advised him against it) and William Shatner (Captain Kirk) was picked instead.
The number of cigarettes a day Vivien Leigh smoked during the filming of Gone With The Wind. Clark Gable smoked ‘just’ sixty a day.
185
The number of seconds the longest movie kiss lasted. The film was You’re In The Army Now (1941) and the kissers were Jane Wyman (Ronald Reagan’s first wife) and Regis Toomey.
191
The number of kisses John Barrymore performed with different women in the 1926 film Don Juan. This was before the 1930 Hays Code, which banned ‘excessive and lustful kissing.’
262
The number of times Eddie Murphy swore in the film Harlem Nights.
400
The number of actresses who tested for the role of Scarlett in Gone With The Wind, out of 1,400 who were interviewed. They included Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Norma Shearer, Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead, Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, Jean Harlow and Carole Lombard. However, only Paulette Goddard and Vivien Leigh were filmed in colour for their auditions.
742
The house number in Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, where the Simpsons live. No one knows where Springfield, the Simpsons’ home town, is and the writers often tease the audience. For example, in one episode, Marge phones an egg-painting company and, when asked for her address, says, ‘742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, Ohi-’, then stops herself and says, ‘Oh hiya Maude!’ to Maude Flanders, who suddenly appears in her kitchen.
2211
Dirty Harry’s badge number.
4,077
The number of the Mobile Army Service Hospital in M*A*S*H.
8,000
The (largest) number of horses assembled for King Vidor’s epic film War and Peace (1956).
20,000
The highest-paid animal actors are bears, which can earn $20,000 a day.
24601
Sideshow Bob’s prison number in The Simpsons – the same as Jean Valjean’s prison number in Les Miserables.
233,500
The amount in dollars the Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane fetched at auction.
The amount in dollars The Maltese Falcon icon from the film of the same name fetched at auction.
666,000
The amount in dollars Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz fetched at auction.
30,150,000
The number of people who tuned in to watch the Christmas Day 1986 edition of EastEnders.
193,000,000
The amount in dollars more it cost to make a film about the Titanic than it did to actually build it.
248,000,000
The number of dollars The Blair Witch Project grossed having only cost $22,000 to make – thus making it the film with the highest box-office sales-to-production cost ratio of all time.