Trivia: Before production began, Judi Dench was still suffering from a toe injury she obtained whilst working on her previous movie. She didn't tell anyone about the injury as she didn't want to lose her role.
Trivia: Meryl Streep's role is the only performance for which Wes Craven directed an actor to an Academy Award nomination.
Trivia: Audrey Hepburn was fluent in English, French, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish and Italian. She served with the Dutch Resistance in WWII - at the tender age of 15.
Trivia: Paul Jesson and Timothy Spall play father and son in this film. In real life, Jesson is only ten years older than Spall.
Trivia: Although they played mother and son in this film, Debbie Reynolds (born 1932) was only twelve years older than Michael Douglas (born 1944).
Trivia: When "Auto Focus" debuted, Bob Crane's son, Scotty Crane, complained loudly that the film was completely inaccurate and misleading. Scotty said that, while his father had been a lifelong sex-addict who recorded and photographed sex acts as far back as 1956, he was not a church-goer (as depicted in the film), he never tried S&M (as depicted in the film), and that he only started socializing with John Henry Carpenter in 1975, long after the Hogan's Heroes TV series ended, just 3 years before the unsolved murder that took Bob Crane's life. The film jumbles all of these events out of chronological order, omitting factual events while fabricating pure fantasy events for no other reason than to sensationalize Crane's troubled life and death.
Trivia: Maureen Stapleton won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Emma Goldman, even though she only has nine minutes of screen time.
Trivia: Will Smith won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in the film. However, his award was overshadowed by an altercation with Chris Rock earlier in the evening, which saw Smith slap Rock in the face after Rock made a joke about Smith's wife Jada Pinkett Smith (which Will initially laughed at). As a result, Smith was given a 10-year ban from the Oscars ceremony, and also lost consideration for upcoming film roles.
Trivia: The book that this movie is based on is a fake. The author Thomas E Gaddis admitted he never met Stroud until 1962 in a courthouse in Kansas City for 30 seconds. His story came from his mother, ex-cons who knew him or he just made them up. Stroud was never allowed to see the film.
Trivia: Although Adrian Brody was officially the star of "Hollywoodland," his character (private detective Louis Simo) was a completely fictional role in the movie. Virtually all of the other characters in the film are based on real people, but there never was a Louis Simo, and he's not based on any actual person (s). George Reeves' mother did hire an attorney and a detective agency in real life; however, "Hollywoodland" director Allen Coulter said that the character of Louis Simo wasn't even partially based on anyone in real life.
Trivia: Eddie is given a heartfelt pep talk by his idol Matti Nykänen, the Finnish ski jumper. Nykänen actually spoke no English at all.
Trivia: Although Eileen Heckart plays Paul Newman's mother in the film, she was only six years older than Newman.
Trivia: Christian Bale was originally cast as George W. Bush, but left the production before filming started. Josh Brolin was cast at the last minute instead.