Trivia for
Cold Mountain (2003) More at IMDbPro »

• Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were both considering roles in this movie, yet Cruise was unaware of Kidman's involvement. Cruise backed out but Kidman immediately signed up.
  
  
• Francis Kemp was first considered for the old mountain woman, but turned it down.
  
  
• Edited using Apple's "Final Cut Pro 3.0.2" software.
  
  
• As of 2003, this was the most expensive film Miramax has financed on its own, with a budget of about $79 million.
  
  
• Singer Faith Hill auditioned for the part of Sara.
  
  
• Nicole Kidman did all of her own piano playing.
  
  
• Nicole Kidman used an old converted bus once owned by executed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu as her on-location dressing room.
  
  
• Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, and Daniel Day-Lewis were all considered for the role of Inman at one point or another.
  
  
• Natalie Portman originally auditioned for the part of Ada.
  
  
• In the original script, Inman stays with Sara to help clean up after the encounter with the Union soldiers, but Sara's baby dies and a grief-stricken Sara shoots herself. This is one of the deleted scenes on the DVD.
  
  
• One of the DVD deleted scenes shows Inman finally arriving back at Cold Mountain only to find that Georgia is the only one at the house. Georgia tells Inman that Ada and Ruby are a long ways off in the mountains, and Inman sets off to find them.
  
  
• There is a real Cold Mountain in North Carolina, located within the Pisgah National Forest southwest of Asheville. However, there is not and has never been a town named after the mountain.
  
  
• When Inman heads off to war there is a banner, "Old Rip's Awake! Watch out Yankees!" posted on the Cold Mountain General Store. This is in reference to North Carolina being known as "The Rip Van Winkle" state.
  
  
• Brendan Gleeson is an accomplished fiddle player and does all his own playing in this film.
  
  
• Rachel Weisz was considered for the Ruby Thewes role.
  
  
• The rather odd-looking pistol that Inman is carrying before he is captured by Confederate soldiers is an 1860 Beauregard LeMat, which was a favored weapon of many Confederate cavalrymen, as it held nine shots as well as a lower barrel with a .28-gauge shotgun load. This was the type of pistol carried by Confederate General JEB Stuart.
  
  
• At one point in his journey, Inman asks a local if he's near the Cape Fear River. Cape Fear is adjacent to the coastal city of Wilmington, and the Cape Fear River runs south through Wilmington. It also is the name of a 1962 film (Cape Fear (1962) and its 1991 remake (Cape Fear (1991)), whose fictional stories take place in and around Cape Fear and the Wilmington area.
  
  
• The three Union soldiers who come to Sara's house are named Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph, sharing their names with three of Falstaff's men from several William Shakespeare plays, including "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "Henry IV" 1 and 2, and "Henry V". In the latter, Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph are soldiers fighting in another country who loot locals' houses and get punished for it, just as their namesakes in this film are.
  
  
• The names of Sally Swanger's sons, "Acton" and "Ellis", are also the names that Anne Brontë and Emily Brontë used as pseudonyms to hide their genders when marketing their novels. They used "Acton Bell" and "Ellis Bell" and their sister Charlotte Brontë used the name "Currer Bell".
  
  
• Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Eric Bana were all considered for roles.
  
  
• Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett were both considered for the role of Ada.
  
  
• The film has a shooting ratio of 60:1, which means that for every one minute that appears on screen, there were 60 minutes of footage.
  
  

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