Trivia for
True Lies (1994) More at IMDbPro »

• The US Government supplied three Marine Harriers and their pilots for a fee of $100,736 ($2,410 per hour).
  
  
• When Arnold Schwarzenegger rescues wife Jamie Lee Curtis from an airborne chopper, he grasps her by her arm just as the chopper heads out over the water. The woman you see dangling below the chopper skid is no body double, but Curtis doing her very own stunt work. At her insistence, director James Cameron agreed to let her perform this scary spectacle. According to Jamie Lee Curtis, on the TV special promoting "True Lies", it was Cameron's idea for her to do the helicopter work; she said, "Oh, yeah. And just where are you going to be while I'm dangling way up there in the air, Jim?" And, according to her, he said, "Hanging out the door filming you with a hand-held camera." So she decided that if he was willing to do that to get the shot, she could stand to do it, too.
  
  
• Body count: 71
  
  
• The set of bra and matching panties worn by Helen Tasker (Jamie Lee Curtis) during the striptease scene were Ms. Curtis's own.
  
  
• Jamie Lee Curtis did the helicopter stunt on her birthday.
  
  
• In an interview, James Cameron says that the script was brought to him by Arnold Schwarzenegger who said that he wanted to do it because he thought the Tasker character was interesting. Cameron was shocked because he had never seen Scwarzenegger pick a script based solely on his interest in a character and decided that he saw the same thing and made the movie.
  
  
• A sequel to True Lies (1994) was once in the works, which would've reunited the principal cast as well as been directed by James Cameron, who directed the first movie. A script was even ready for this sequel, and had the movie been made, it would've been released sometime in 2002. The sequel idea was eventually scrapped (or at least indefinitely shelved) due to script problems as well the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Cameron even said in an interview that he dropped his sequel plans because "in this day and age, terrorism just isn't funny anymore".
  
  
• After Harry and Helen Tasker escape from Samir, Helen says "I married Rambo". Director James Cameron helped write Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985).
  
  
• James Cameron wanted to make Spider-Man starring Michael Biehn. However, he thought that the film would be technically challenging at that point, and made this movie instead.
  
  
• James Cameron can be heard as the helicopter pilot who says, "Yeah she's got her head in his lap, Yahoo!"
  
  
• The "horse in the hotel" scene was filmed in the lobby and elevators of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
  
  
• When Arnold Schwarzenegger is at the urinal, the song he whistles is "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music (1965), a movie set in Schwarzenegger's native country, Austria.
  
  
• James Cameron remembered Art Malik's work in City of Joy (1992) and offered him the role of Salim Abu Aziz without an audition.
  
  
• The military aircraft seen late in the movie were McDonnel Douglas AV-8B Harriers of the Marine Attack Squadron 223 (VMA-223) which is nicknamed the "Bulldogs".
  
  
• Harry Tasker works for the secret government agency called The Omega Sector. Its motto is "The last line of defense." It's headed by Charlton Heston who once starred in a movie called The Omega Man (1971).
  
  
• When the film was initially released, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was one of several groups to hold a protest at a Washington, D.C., theater. The groups attacked the film for its "depiction of Middle Easterners as homicidal, religious zealots". A demand for the boycott of the movie was called, as well as a ban of its distribution in fifty-four Arab and Muslim countries.
  
  
• Originally, the writers wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger's character during the horse chase sequence to chase after the suspect through the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument. The National Parks Service refused to allow that to happen.
  
  
• In an early version of the script, Harry discovers Dana ditching school to sing in her boyfriend's band. While Harry drives Dana back to school, they sing the song she was doing ("Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream) when he walked in on her. Both scenes were cut from the movie. Instead, you can faintly hear the song playing on Dana's Walkman in the scene before her boyfriend picks her up for school.
  
  
• The bridge that was blown up was an 80' model of the 7 Mile Bridge. The old bridge (where they did the shot) was already "blown up", when they opened the new bridge. The bridge had sections removed so that taller boats could pass through without the need for a drawbridge.
  
  
• Many problems plagued the shooting of the opening sequence: the mansion scene was filmed on an extremely cold night and the mansion itself was not heated; all of the women wore dresses with nothing underneath and a costume change room was set up outside in the cold; kerosene lamps were used to heat the tents; one of the extra's blouses caught fire. For their suffering through the harsh cold that night, the extras were paid an additional $50.
  
  
• A full scale model of a Harrier was built for all close shots of Arnold Schwarzenegger flying the plane; it was puppeteered from a crane on a nearby building which was painted out with CGI. (As the Harrier lands in the street, dust and debris stirred up by its jetblast is all done in CGI; the CGI blast swirls up a CGI piece of paper which is sucked into the Harrier's CGI air compressor fan)
  
  
• The soundstage where they shot the Harrier scale model was the largest 180 degree green-screen background ever built.
  
  
• Eliza Dushku broke some ribs during the filming of her Harrier jet stunt scenes.
  
  
• According to the plane tickets that Helen Tasker glances at, the movie is set in 1994, the year of its release.
  
  
• In the scene where Helen Tasker (Jamie Lee Curtis) is given a "mission" they tell her that her contact's name is 'Boris' and she asks to be 'Natasha'. Boris and Natasha were the villains from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show ("Rocky and His Friends" (1959)).
  
  
• The sub-machine gun used by the terrorist in the bathroom is a Steyr TMP 9mm Austrian weapon.
  
  
• The film is loosely based on Claude Zidi's La totale! (1991), a French comedy from the early '90s in which a wife discovers her husband works for the French secret services. It starred Miou-Miou and Thierry Lhermitte.
  
  
• The appearance and traits of Spencer Trilby (Charlton Heston) is based on Nick Fury, a Marvel Comics character. Like Fury, Trilby has an eye-patch and the same mannerisms as well as heading a peacekeeping organization.
  
  
• Tia Carrere's contract was only for seven weeks but because of long period of shooting, she ended up earning 7 months of pay.
  
  
• For the spectacular Florida Keys climax, the production actually bought some redundant causeway links, and restored the missing chunks so that they could blow them to smithereens onscreen.
  
  
• Arnold Schwarzenegger signed on to make the film before he made Last Action Hero (1993). The reason for the delay was that James Cameron was busy writing Strange Days (1995) for his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow.
  
  
• The just after dawn sequence on the bridge, where the truck teeters on the edge and a pelican knocks it in, was actually filmed just before dusk. Therefore instead of the limo fight and trucks falling into the water facing east toward the rising sun, they were all facing the setting sun in the west.
  
  
• Rosanna Arquette, Kim Basinger, Annette Bening, Joan Cusack, Geena Davis, Melanie Griffith, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Madonna, Demi Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sharon Stone, Emma Thompson and Debra Winger were considered for the role of Helen.
  
  
• Jodie Foster was originally cast as Helen Tasker, but was forced to turn the role down because she was signed to Nell (1994).
  
  
• During the striptease scene and Jamie Lee Curtis falls was actually not part of the script. She really does fall but to continue filming she gets back up and continues on with the scene. You can also see it was not intentional by Arnold Schwarzenegger's sudden reaction to help her when she falls.
  
  

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