Cleopatra - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[fred]

The Roman forum built at Cinecitta was three times the size of the real thing.

[steve]

Hume Cronyn (Sosigenes) was originally signed to be on the movie for ten weeks. He stayed with the production for ten and a half months.

[addison]

Dame Elizabeth Taylor had sixty-five costume changes for this movie, a record for a movie at the time. That record was taken from Taylor by Dame Julie Andrews in 1968 when she played the lead role in Star! (1968), which is also another movie produced and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox. Based on the life of the actress Gertrude Lawrence, Star! (1968) saw Andrews change costumes a staggering one hundred twenty-five times, a record still unbroken or unmatched to this day. Dame Joan Collins and Madonna came close with eighty-five costume changes for the mini-series Sins (1986) and the big-budget musical epic movie Evita (1996), respectively.

[lena]

By June 6 of the Italian shoot, spending was nearly seventy thousand dollars per day and the movie was already three million dollars more expensive than Ben-Hur (1959).

[kim]

Martin Landau was booked to play Euphranor. When no one could be found to play Rufio, Landau was re-cast.

[frederick]

During Cleopatra's entry into Rome, the shots of the entry of Cleopatra's giant sphinx, and the parade that precedes it, were filmed several months apart, posing problems in matching the lighting.