Trivia / Chariots of Fire

• Actor-Shared Background: Ian Charleson attended the University of Edinburgh, just like his character Eric Liddell.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: "Titles" was never played at the triumphant scenes, despite what parodies do.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: The main title score may be the first instrumental film cue to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
• Breakthrough Hit: For producer David Puttnam and the wider British film industry. For the preceding decade or so, American audiences had considered British cinema to consist mostly just of James Bond, No Budget horror films, and Awful British Sex Comedies. This film's Academy Award success put British cinema back on the map for American audiences — albeit only for about four years (though this time period did produce one other British-produced Best Picture contender, The Killing Fields, also produced by Puttnam) before Revolution (1985) proved such a critical and commercial disaster that it left British cinema's reputation at an all-time low, not recovering until late in the following decade.
• Deleted Role:
  • According to Ruby Wax, she filmed a supporting role as Jackson Scholz's girlfriend, but the scenes were cut because "my friend was playing Ian Charleson's girlfriend and they didn't think her acting was great, though they told her it was because she didn’t shave her armpits." She still appears as an extra in the climactic race.
  • There were originally more scenes with the other runners in Paris, but they were heavily trimmed down to keep the focus on Abrahams and Liddell. Many of these characters (like Charley Paddock) only have fleeting appearances in the final film.
  • Michael Lonsdale is listed in the end credits, but doesn't appear anywhere in the final film.
• Doing It for the Art: Brad Davis and Dennis Christopher appeared as a favour to Producer David Puttnam, waiving their fees in order to attract financing from backers who wanted "marquee names".
• Fake Brit: Alice Krige (Sybil) is South African and Patrick Magee (Cadogan) is Northern Irish.
• Referenced by...:
  • The Crown (2016) features an episode where executive producer Dodi Fayed brings his father Mohamed Al-Fayed to watch the filming of the famous beach run, with Mohamed complaining about the project and questioning whether if it will work. Then it cuts to them watching the Oscars on TV, and celebrating the Best Picture win.
  • QWOP plays a few notes from the title theme of Chariots when you start running.
• Throw It In!:
  • The cow mooing — and Ian Charleson's reaction — at the end of Eric's speech at the running meeting.
  • Charleson also ad-libbed the speech to the crowd at the Scotland v. Ireland races. He thought the scripted speech was portentous and inauthentic, so the director let him write words he personally found inspirational instead.
• Uncredited Role: Carole Ashby as an extra.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sean Connery was offered a cameo role. He had to turn it down when filming on Outland overran.
  • The opening scene on the beach was originally to be scored with "L'Enfant" from Vangelis's 1979 album Opéra sauvage, but the composer convinced Hugh Hudson to let him score it with an original composition using the same tempo, leading to the iconic theme.
• Working Title: When Colin Welland completed his first draft, the only title he could think of was Runners. Then, one Sunday evening he turned on BBC's religious music series Songs of Praise, featuring the hymn "Jerusalem". The chorus including the words "Bring me my chariot of fire". The writer leapt up to his feet and shouted to his wife, "I've got it, Pat! 'Chariots of Fire'!"

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