Trivia / Mary Reilly

• Actor Allusion:
  • Julia Roberts later played the Irish girlfriend of an ill-fated upper class man in Michael Collins the same year.
  • In the film The Object of Beauty a character complains about too many adaptations of Dr Jeyll and Mr Hyde. The character is played by...John Malkovich.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget $47 million. Domestic - $5.6 million and $12 million worldwide.
• California Doubling: Yorkshire doubled for Victorian London, and a few scenes were filmed in Edinburgh too.
• Completely Different Title: The Chinese version of this film loosely translates to Lethal Incarnation.
• Creator Backlash: Julia Roberts didn't like how this turned out in the end.
• Dawson Casting: If we go by a comment Mrs. Farraday makes, Mary is apparently not even eighteen yet. Julia Roberts was almost thirty when she played her. Of course being lower class and having been in service since she was a child, it makes sense that Mary would be Younger Than They Look.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Mildly. John Malkovich wore blue contacts for scenes with Jekyll, to make him appear softer than the dark-eyed Hyde.
• Fake Brit:
  • Glenn Close is American and plays the British Mrs. Farraday. John Malkovich is a borderline example, as he keeps his American accent - so we could assume that Jekyll is an American in this continuity.
  • There's also Ciaran Hinds (Irish) as the parliament member Sir Danvers Carew.
• Fake Irish: Julia Roberts. One of many criticisms for the film was her poor attempt at an Irish accent.
• Follow the Leader: Following the lead from Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in being a Truer to the Text adaptation of a Victorian horror story. The Mary Reilly part of the story was however based on a book itself. Winona Ryder was even the first choice for Mary, after she had played Mina in Dracula.
• Hostility on the Set: Julia Roberts and John Malkovich didn't get on.
• Playing Against Type: Julia Roberts' first (and last) attempt to act in a period piece.
• Production Posse: This reunited many people from Stephen Frears's adaptation of Dangerous Liasons - stars John Malkovich and Glenn Close, screenwriter Christopher Hampton, producer Norma Heyman, composer George Fenton, cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, production designer Stuart Craig and casting director Juliet Taylor.
• Troubled Production: The two leads did not get along and production was delayed many times. Julia Roberts likewise had a personal jet on standby just in case she wanted to fly back to Los Angeles - running up a bill of $120,000. The ending was rewritten about twenty times and re-shot three times months after production had wrapped - though the first one shot was ultimately used in the final cut.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Tim Burton was originally set to direct, but chose to do Ed Wood instead. His choice for the lead role was Winona Ryder. Nicole Kidman and Uma Thurman were also considered.
  • Stephen Frears's first choice for Jekyll was Daniel Day-Lewis, and the studio wanted the Shakespearean Al Pacino.
  • Three alternate endings were shot months after production had wrapped - Glenn Close even being flown back to England on the Concorde for one day of work. One ending would have Mary staying with Jekyll and another where she stays with Hyde. The one they used was the original where Mary leaves them both.

---