Trivia for
Anastasia (1997) More at IMDbPro »

• As is the case with many 20th Century Fox Films, the film cans for the advance screening prints and show prints had a code name. Anastasia was "The Train".
  
  
• When 'Meg Ryan' was offered the role of Anya, she could not decide if she wanted to accept it or not. Upon hearing of Ryan's indecision, Fox took an audio clip of Ryan talking in Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and created a short animated sequence of Anya speaking the lines. They sent the clip to Ryan, and she was so impressed that she changed her mind and accepted the role.
  
  
• Composer David Newman's father Alfred Newman wrote the score for 1956's Anastasia.
  
  
• The Parisian bridge on which the confrontation between Rasputin and Dimitri and Anastasia occurs is the Alexander III bridge, named after the real Anastasia Romanov's grandfather on the occasion of his state visit to France in the 1870s.
  
  
• The drawing the Empress holds when she and Anya are reminiscing (the same one we see little Anastasia give her at the beginning of the movie) is a picture the real Anastasia had drawn for her father in 1914.
  
  
• The portrait in the ballroom of the whole family includes a dog. The dog existed. This spaniel named Joy belonged to Anastasia's brother, Alexei, and was found alive at the house where the family was killed. Anastasia's own dog, Jimmy, did not survive.
  
  
• The real Anastasia once wore a dress almost exactly like the one Anya wears in the last scenes of the movie. This same dress was seen in Anastasia (1956).
  
  
• When Anya returns to the palace in St. Petersburg and is in the ballroom you can see the painting of the coronation of Alexandra and Nicholas on the left hand side being the first picture, which is a real painting.
  
  
• The musical number "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)" includes cameos by various historical characters from the time, including Maurice Chevalier, Sigmund Freud, Charles Lindbergh, Josephine Baker, Claude Monet, Isadora Duncan, Auguste Rodin, and Gertude Stein.
  
  
• The Russian Ballet that the characters go to see is "Cinderella".
  
  
• Liz Callaway was called at the last minute by Flaherty and Ahrens to substitute for a singer who couldn't make the recording session of the temp tracks for Fox. Her tracks of the songs were liked so much they led to her subsequent casting as the singing voice of Anastasia.
  
  
• This was the first feature for 20th Century Fox's animation division.
  
  
• To save money, the animation cameras were mounted with Fox's own CinemaScope anamorphic optics. This film became the first 20th Century Fox production to use actual CinemaScope lenses in 30 years.
  
  
• Patrick Stewart was Don Bluth's second choice for the role of Rasputin.
  
  
• The music box in this movie actually existed. It was given to the real Anastasia by the real Marie Feoderovna for her thirteenth birthday, but was "silver with a ballerina on top."
  
  
• The real Anastasia was indeed born at the Peterhof Palace, which was called "The Farm" by her family. It was designed in imitation of the Palace of Versailles, in France.
  
  
• In real life, Gregori Efimovich a.k.a. Rasputin was a very controversial figure who, in fact, was the Romanov's advisor and Tsarina Alexandra's most trusted confidant. Rumor has it that Rasputin told the Tsarina he was about to be assassinated and that if one of her relatives killed him, all the Romanov family would die within a year. While of course these facts were too dark to be included in the movie, there is a reference: during the song "A Rumor in St. Petersburg", an old woman tells Dimitri to buy "Count Yussupov's pajamas", while offering a pair of ragged clothes. Yussupov, who actually was a prince, really existed, was indeed related to Alexandra Romanov and was the one who killed the real Rasputin, along with a group of noblemen.
  
  

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