Trivia / The Day of the Jackal

• Executive Meddling: A minor example, but Fred Zinnemann and producer Sir John Woolf argued over whether the English cast members should speak with French accents. Woolf thought it would be distracting if French characters spoke like Englishmen, while Zinnemann argued that if the movie was good enough it wouldn't matter to the audience. Zinnemann won the argument, though he admitted afterwards that Woolf wasn't entirely wrong.
• Fake Nationality: Most of the major French characters are played by English actors, though Michael Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig and Olga Georges-Picot are exceptions.
• Life Imitates Art:
  • Infamous terrorist and assassin Ilich "Carlos" Ramírez Sánchez was given the nickname "The Jackal" after a Guardian correspondent saw a copy of this book among his possessions. Ironically the book didn't even belong to him, but to the person who owned the apartment where he was staying.
  • Intelligence agencies have often come to refer to one of the ways the Jackal created a fake identity — by using the name, along with birthdate and place of birth, of someone who died as an infant or small child — as "the Jackal" system or method (the method existed before the book, but the book popularized it, or at least made people more aware of it - see the Shown Their Work entry on the main page).
• Uncredited Role: David Kernan as Per Lundqvist.
• What Could Have Been:
  • John Frankenheimer wanted to direct.
  • Michael Caine, Roger Moore, Jack Nicholson and Robert Redford were all considered for the Jackal, but Fred Zinnemann refused to cast a star in the role, feeling that the character should be anonymous. Robert Shaw lobbied for the part, but Zinnemann was looking for someone "nimble and willowy".
  • Frederick Forsyth was offered a a Creator Cameo as Charles Calthrop, the man mistaken for the Jackal's true identity.

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