Trivia / Dead Again

• Acting for Two:
  • Kenneth Branagh plays both Mike Church and Roman Strauss, while Emma Thompson plays both Grace and Margaret Strauss.
  • In addition, Jo Anderson plays the nun who's pleading Grace's case in the present day, and a starlet who dismisses Roman in the past sequence, while composer Patrick Doyle plays a cop in the present day, and a party-goer in the past sequence.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Both Andy García and Robin Williams were big fans of Branagh's film version of Henry V, and jumped at the chance to work with him.
• Classic Filler Text: Several newspaper pages establish that Roman Strauss is a celebrity. In each page, the first two or three paragraphs are on topic, but the rest are filler, making heavy use of the classic "common recognition" and "public hearing" paragraphs that have been used in many other movies.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Branagh and Thompson are Fake Americans.
  • Branagh is also playing the Austrian Roman Strauss.
• Hey, It's That Place!:
  • Roman's mansion, which later becomes the orphanage Grace turns up at, is none other than stately Wayne manor.
  • The distinctive apartment building where Grace turns out to live was also seen as Philip Marlowe's home in the 1973 film version of The Long Goodbye.
• Playing Against Type: Robin Williams, who up to that point had played either comic roles or characters who were essentially good, plays a creepy ex-psychiatrist.
• Real-Life Relative: Branagh and Thompson were married at the time this film was released.
• Throw It In!:
  • As was his wont, Robin Williams improvised much of Carlisle's first meeting with Mike Church.
  • According to Kenneth Branagh's DVD commentary, Derek Jacobi improvised the stuff that Madsen touches when he's leaving Church's apartment.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Donald Sutherland was the first choice for Franklin Madsen. Other actors considered were Alec Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, and Alan Rickman.
  • The decision to double Mike & Roman and Grace & Margaret was made by Branagh when he took on the project; the screenwriter had envisaged them being played by four different actors.
  • The film was shot entirely in color, but when test audiences were confused about which scenes were in the present or a flashback, the flashbacks were made black and white.
  • Grace was originally not mute for the first half hour, but since all her lines in that period were little more than endless repetitions of “I don’t remember,” it was decided she might as well just not talk at all until she had something meaningful to say.

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