A Beautiful Mind - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of A Beautiful Mind or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to A Beautiful Mind

[russell]

During production, Ron Howard and Russell Crowe appeared on a video-only webcam stationed at the set's craft services area and also communicated with Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise on the set of Minority Report (2002) in Los Angeles.

[chris]

Anthony Rapp and Adam Goldberg also played friends in Dazed and Confused (1993).

[kenneth]

Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany have worked together in two very different films.... "A Beautiful Mind" and "Masters and Commanders".

[cassandra]

John Nash is shown smoking in the film. In reality, he was a militant anti-smoker.

[linda]

When Nash works at MIT his office is room 101, like the infamous torture room of the Ministry of Love in George Orwell's 1984.

[frederick]

Tom Cruise was considered to play John Nash.

[ivan]

Jennifer Connelly, who plays Alicia Nash, and Paul Bettany, who plays Charles, married shortly after the movie was released.

[ruby]

The scene towards the end of the film, where John Nash contemplates drinking tea, is based on a true event when Russell Crowe met the real John Nash. He spent fifteen minutes contemplating whether to drink tea or coffee.

[toni]

Robert Redford was considered as director, but withdrew due to scheduling conflicts.

[fred]

For his performance, Russell Crowe won Best Actor at all the major precursor awards (Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, Critics Choice and BAFTA) but lost the Academy Award to Denzel Washington for his performance in Training Day (2001).

[norma]

To create the "golden" look of the campus scenes early in the film, the filmmakers took a low-contrast stock (Fuji F-400 8582) and exposed it to an orange light before loading it into the camera for shooting.

[morris]

A running discussion between Ron Howard and James Horner was the concept of high-level mathematics being less about numbers and solutions, and more akin to a kaleidoscope, in that the ideas evolve and change. After the first screening of the film, Horner told Howard: "I see changes occurring like fast-moving weather systems." He chose it as another theme to connect to Nash's ever-changing character.

[sophie]

John Nash attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology on a full scholarship. One of his professors was so impressed with him that he wrote him a letter of recommendation for Princeton that contained only one line; "This man is a genius."

[ivan]

The film was shot in sequence in order to help Russell Crowe develop a consistently progressive manner of behavior.

[jessie]

The infant used to portray their "son" in the dangerous bathtub scene was a female.

[albert]

The scene where Nash is sitting on the lawn talking to the students was filmed at the Bronx Community College campus (formerly NYU University Heights). If you look in the background you can see the Gould Memorial Library and behind that you can see the busts in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans.

[jessie]

Three separate trips were made to the Princeton University campus.

[michele]

Russell Crowe knew the minute he read Akiva Goldsman's screenplay that he wanted to play John Nash.

[frances]

Greg Cannom was chosen to create the makeup effects, specifically the age progression of the characters. Russell Crowe had previously worked with Cannom on The Insider (1999) and Ron Howard had worked with him on Cocoon (1985). Each character's stages of makeup were broken down by the number of years that would pass between levels. Cannom stressed subtlety between the stages, but worked toward the ultimate stage of "Older Nash". The production team originally decided that the makeup department would age Russell Crowe throughout the film; however, at Crowe's request, the makeup was used to push his look to resemble the facial features of John Nash. Cannom developed a new silicone-type makeup that could simulate skin and be used for overlapping applications; this shortened make-up application time from eight to four hours. Crowe was also fitted with a number of dentures to give him a slight overbite in the film.