FILM · 2004 · USA
Catwoman
57 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (57)
- #001
With her notorious performance in this film, Halle Berry became one of the six actors in history to hold both an Oscar and a Razzie (only five at the time). She was also the first person to accept a Razzie in person, walking on stage proudly holding both her Oscar and her Razzie aloft and shedding tears of joy. She gave a brief acceptance speech: "I'd like to thank Warner Brothers, for making me do this godawful, piece of s**t movie!"
- #002
Forty-three cats were trained for the film. Halle Berry later adopted one of them, an orange-and-white kitten named Play Dough.
- #003
Only a month before its release, the film had to undergo reshoots after testing poorly with preview audiences.
- #004
(At about 1 hour 12 minutes) During the restaurant sequence with Benjamin Bratt, the sushi that Halle Berry devours was actually pieces of fruit shaped to look like raw fish.
- #005
According to whip master Alex Green, Halle Berry had to train for 90 minutes a day for a week to be able to crack the whip successfully.
- #006
A Bengal cat, a domestic breed, was used in the film. Halle Berry loved it so much that she announced she would adopt it. Some media outlets wrongly described the 13-pound house cat as a tiger, which led the Animal Protection Foundation to send Berry an angry letter.
- #007
Michelle Pfeiffer had little idea of how comfortable the costume was in Batman Returns (1992) and as a result refused to take on the role again.
- #008
(At about 50 minutes) The city is never named as Gotham City and no reference is made to Batman or other DC characters, so the film's setting is ambiguous. Because Catwoman from Batman Returns (1992) can be seen among the pile of old catwoman paintings Ophelia shows Patience Phillips, it is possible that Michelle Pfeiffer's version counts as part of the original Batman film universe.
- #009
(At about 1 hour 35 minutes) Zoë Bell was Sharon Stone's stunt double. She received an award for the 220-meter fall performance in which Laurel Hedare falls to her death.
- #010
Catwoman has been portrayed by more actors in live action than any other comic book villain: Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt in Batman (1966), Lee Meriwether in Batman: The Movie (1966), Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns (1992), Halle Berry in this film, Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Camren Bicondova in Gotham (2014), Lili Simmons in Gotham (2019) and Zoë Kravitz in Batman (2022).
- #011
Three Egyptian Mau cats took on the role of Midnight.
- #012
One of Halle Berry's stunt and body doubles is Nito Larioza, a 29-year-old Hawaiian actor and martial arts expert.
- #013
When production halted in mid-2003, rumors circulated that Warner Bros. would shelve the project and instead include the Catwoman character in Batman Begins (2005), but Halle Berry was still in the role.
- #014
The fighting style Catwoman uses is the Brazilian martial art known as capoeira.
- #015
(At about 3 minutes) The monologue presented by Halle Berry in the preview is taken from The Crow (1994), with minor adjustments made to fit the film (e.g. "crow" changed to "cat").
- #016
In October 2024, to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary, Halle Berry posted photos on Instagram in which she is topless, wearing tight bikini bottoms and a mask, with two cats pressed against her breasts.
- #017
The role of Ophelia Powers was first offered to Julie Newmar, who played Catwoman in the Batman (1966) series.
- #018
After reading the script, director Pitof and Jean Rabasse presented producers with an alternative version of the story that had been rejected for being too artistic.
- #019
Halle Berry and Alex Borstein became close friends on the film's set.
- #020
Although the film was a major box-office hit and drew heavy criticism, Halle Berry — who won the Worst Actress Golden Raspberry Award only three years after winning the Best Actress Oscar — admitted in a retrospective interview for the film's 20th anniversary that she did not regret making it, that she had a lot of fun during the shoot, and that she adopted a new cat during production, making it a great experience. She also expressed appreciation for the film's cult following and its rediscovered popularity in later years.
- #021
The scene in which Patience tries to rescue Midnight from the ledge and is saved by Tom Lone just as she is about to fall was originally meant to be the film's opening scene. Because of this, the graphic design was still being worked on and delivered the same day, which is why she is in a hurry and, in the final cut, runs into people on her way to work. This resulted in a continuity error, however, because moving the scenes around made all the characters and extras appear to be wearing the same clothes they had worn the previous day.
- #022
Although the film was a box-office bomb after its release, it remained the highest-grossing female-led superhero film of all time for 13 years, until Wonder Woman (2017) took the title.
- #023
When Halle Berry first tried on the costume, she had problems with its practicality and at one point complained that it was too tight and uncomfortable. Because the leather bra she wore could slip down at times, the costume had to be repaired several times during production.
- #024
Halle Berry was initially considered to play Catwoman in Darren Aronofsky's cancelled Batman: Year One film.
- #025
The filming of the big fight scene between Catwoman and Laurel Hedare took nine days.
- #026
When Halle Berry was first cast, she was not a cat person. At the time she had two dogs and said she did not like cats because they were so aloof. During the shoot, however, she grew quite attached to the dozens of cats she had to film with for hours, and she even adopted one of them shortly after production was completed.
- #027
The film appears on film critic Roger Ebert's "Most Hated" list.
- #028
With an 8% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it is, along with Supergirl (1984), the worst-reviewed DC Comics film.
- #029
Halle Berry was taken to hospital after colliding with a piece of set equipment during a chase scene. The injury was not serious.
- #030
The DVD includes several deleted scenes: a dialogue scene between Patience and Laurel after George disapproves of her work, a chase scene with three dogs in the junkyard after the resurrection, a slightly extended love scene, skipped dialogue between Catwoman and Laurel at her home, and an alternative ending that is more Hollywood-like: Patience is painting a wall somewhere outside. Tom comes to her and tells her that Wesley has confessed and the murders are officially closed; after talking for a while they kiss and the camera pulls away.
- #031
A newspaper reported that during the filming of one scene, Sharon Stone's mobile phone rang and Stone took the call, delaying the shoot for a while.
- #032
Cat breeds: the Egyptian Mau is entirely a domestic cat; the Bengal is a cross between a domestic cat and an Asian leopard cat.
- #033
During the shoot, Pitof spoke only French and very little English, which required the use of an interpreter on set to help him communicate with the cast and crew.
- #034
Both Sharon Stone and Benjamin Bratt appear in this film. Bratt was considered by the producers for the male lead in Basic Instinct 2 (2006), but Sharon Stone allegedly vetoed his casting because she did not consider him a good enough actor.
- #035
Ashley Judd was originally planned for the lead role.
- #036
According to the cat trainers and visual effects artists, 99.9% of the cat shots in the film used real cats, and CGI was to be used only when absolutely necessary.
- #037
Simon Kinberg was hired to rewrite the script, worked on it for only one day, and according to Kinberg the script was fundamentally broken and he might have been able to save it if he had had a month.
- #038
Sharon Stone was competing for the role of Poison Ivy in another film, Batman & Robin (1997).
- #039
Frances Conroy later appeared in Joker (2019), another film centered on Batman's traditional adversary.
- #040
Josh Lucas was offered the role of Detective Tom Lone but turned it down.
- #041
Mattel partnered with DC Comics and Warner Bros. to promote the film, planning to release Barbie dolls based on Halle Berry's Catwoman. The first doll released was a playline doll with the standard Generation Girl face mold and a belly body with movable arms. A collector's edition featuring a sculpt resembling Halle Berry was planned and even presented at the 2004 Toy Fair for a fall release before being abruptly canceled due to the film's failure. The Halle Berry sculpt would eventually be used for the 2010 Barbie as Jinx Johnson doll, based on Die Another Day (2002), in a series of Barbie dolls based on Bond girls.
- #042
Daniel Waters wrote a draft of the screenplay in 1995. Writers who revised the script include Laeta Kalogridis, Theresa Rebeck (credited), Kate Kondell, John Rogers (credited), John Brancato (credited), Michael Ferris (credited), Jon Cowan, John O'Brien, David Reynolds, Harley Peyton, Valerie Breiman, Rita Hsiao and Andrew W. Marlowe.
- #043
The film's cast includes one Oscar winner, Halle Berry, and one Oscar nominee, Sharon Stone.
- #044
Sharon Stone was considered to play Vicki Vale in Batman (1989).
- #045
Britney Spears's song "Outrageous," from her 2003 album In the Zone, was set to be the main track on the Catwoman soundtrack in a special remix featuring Snoop Dogg. However, after Britney injured her knee while shooting the music video, which ended the album's promotion and her 2004 tour, the song was replaced. The remix was never released or leaked.
- #046
Frances McDormand was once in talks for the role.
- #047
Frances Conroy was listed as a potential nominee in the voting for the 2005 Razzie Awards. Her performance in this film put her on the shortlist for Worst Supporting Actress, but she was not nominated.
- #048
(Around 15 minutes) While looking at Patience's artwork, Detective Lone remarks that the drawings remind him of an early Chagall, elegant but strange, very much in the tradition of the old Dutch masters. This is an absurd comparison given that Chagall's style has no connection to that of the Dutch masters. Chagall was an early modernist who created fantastic images that were both strange and figurative. The works of the Dutch masters (for example, Rembrandt, Steen, Hals, Bosch and van Leyden) date from roughly 200 years before Chagall, in the period often called the Dutch Golden Age, and focused mostly on portraits, still lifes, landscapes and daily life, rendered with detailed realism and almost no whimsy.
- #049
To help offset the film's weak box office performance, Village Roadshow Ltd. agreed to sell its 50% stake in Eye Shop, a shopping mall advertising business, to joint venture partner Ten Network Holdings Ltd. for A$14.9 million (US$10.6 million), which would give Village Roadshow a pre-tax profit of A$7.7 million (US$5.5 million). As a result, net profit after tax for the year ending June 30, 2005 was expected to be A$45 million (US$32.2 million).
- #050
Due to a scheduling conflict, Graeme Revell and William Orbit had to withdraw from scoring duties. Klaus Badelt was later hired in their place.
- #051
In a pre-release promotional interview, Halle Berry described her portrayal of Catwoman: "A red-blooded woman who wants to have fun? Absolutely! Along with the duality of her new persona, that makes her a multifaceted woman, which is what all of us, I think, are trying to be." [DVD extras].
- #052
At about 1 hour 26 minutes, a car with the license plate PITOF speeds away, a nod to director Jean-Christophe "Pitof" Comar.
- #053
During the theater chase, Halle Berry falls to the ground while holding onto a live wire. In the background, the panel of the power box she is electrocuted by features an electrocuted black cat and the words High Voltage instead of a standard lighting bolt. This adds further visual amusement to this cat-themed film.
- #054
In the scene where Halle Berry jumps from the police station, a breaking Jaguar car hits her from behind. Its license plate bore the name of the on-set French special effects supervisor, PITOF.
- #055
Halle Berry and Michelle Pfeiffer, who had played Catwoman in Batman Returns (1992), both appeared in New Year's Eve (2011), but they did not share any scenes together.
- #056
The remix of the Young Gunz song "Grown Man," featuring Ye, was initially slated to be the first single from the soundtrack. Due to label difficulties, the song was scrapped in favor of the R. Kelly and Britney Spears collaboration "Outrageous."
- #057
Janet Varney, who played a party girl in one scene, was years later tasked with defending the film on the SYFY channel series The Great Debate (2020). Toward the end of the episode, a photo of her appearing in the film was shown.
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