FILM · 2009 · BELGIUM
Mr. Nobody
26 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (26)
- #001
The street where Nemo's parents first met is named Butterfly Lane N. S., a reference to the butterfly effect.
- #002
The train station where young Nemo must choose between staying with his mother or his father is named "Chance."
- #003
Jared Leto stated that this was one of the most complex characters he had ever portrayed.
- #004
With a budget of 33 million euros, it was the most expensive Belgian film ever made at the time.
- #005
Nemo means "nobody" in Latin. The name may remind people of Homer's epic; at one point in the Odyssey, the Greek hero Odysseus and several of his men are captured by the cyclops Polyphemus. When asked his name, Odysseus says it means "nobody." Later, when Odysseus and his men try to escape, they drive a burning stake into the cyclops's single eye. The wounded cyclops cries for help, but when his friends come and ask who did this to him, Polyphemus replies: "Nobody! Nobody stabbed me in the eye and nobody escaped!" His friends, of course, do not take his story seriously and leave; Odysseus and his men have escaped successfully.
- #006
A recurring phone number in the film, 123-581-1321, is the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence if the random 1 in the middle is ignored.
- #007
It premiered at the 66th Venice Film Festival, where it received a 10-minute standing ovation.
- #008
Free movement through time is a recurring theme of the film. The main character is named Nemo, which read backwards means "omen," a prophecy of the future. Moreover, his true interest is Anna and her daughter Eve; both names read the same backwards.
- #009
After this film, Jared Leto took a break from acting to focus on his band Thirty Seconds to Mars. He returned with Dallas Buyers Club (2013).
- #010
The child/teenage versions of Nemo and Anna had British accents, but when they meet again years later their American accents emerge. This was probably intentional, due to the various timelines being mixed up by the older Nemo.
- #011
While Sarah Polley was taking a break from shooting the Neanderthal scenes, she received a phone call from a friend informing her that a Toronto Star reporter had discovered that her biological father was not Michael Polley but Montreal filmmaker Harry Gulkin, with whom her mother had had an affair while performing in a play at Montreal's Centaur Theatre in 1978. Sarah, who had discovered the truth herself, contacted the reporter and, in makeup, ran out to a park bench outside and began to cry as she tried to persuade the reporter to sit on the story, since she had not yet told Michael and was not sure she wanted to. The reporter agreed, and Sarah then decided to make a documentary about her mother and the events that led to her pregnancy and her family learning the truth — Stories We Tell (2012).
- #012
It was composer Pierre Van Dormael's last film before his death in 2008.
- #013
Nemo explains the film with a chess term: "zugzwang," defined as a situation in which the obligation to make a move when it is one's turn is a serious, often decisive disadvantage.
- #014
Completing all 500 visual effects took six months.
- #015
In one of the earlier scenes, when Nemo presumably wakes up with Elise, he goes to the bathroom but hesitates as he turns on the light. During a lucid dream, nothing happens when you turn on the light, but it later becomes clear that you are dreaming. It is as if Nemo knows this and is waiting for the consequences. At one point the word architect is used, and constant awakening and false awakening are also among the film's heavy dream themes.
- #016
Rhys Ifans was cast as Nemo's father because of his performances in Notting Hill (1999) and Enduring Love (2004).
- #017
It was shot over a period of 120 days.
- #018
It is Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael's first English-language film.
- #019
Young Nemo's observation that "everything remains possible as long as you don't choose" may seem, via (Erwin) Schrödinger's Cat, like a variation on fundamental quantum theory in which the cat in a box thought experiment is unseen; that is, the choice to make a decision, to observe what is, combines/collapses states of uncertainty (the cat is only dead or alive when it is looked at) into what we = he experience as Nemo's final reality.
- #020
Eva Green was offered the role of Anna.
- #021
An earlier, longer, still-in-progress version of the film was rejected by Cannes for competition, which then offered this cut of Mr. Nobody a non-competitive slot.
- #022
This was Jaco Van Dormael's first film in 13 years.
- #023
Sarah Polley was the first actor to be cast in the film.
- #024
The moments when Nemo (Jared Leto) wets his pants while predicting the future are a nod to The Exorcist, in which Linda Blair (Regan MacNeil) does the same and foresees the death of a family friend.
- #025
Actor Pascal Duquenne appears in a cameo lasting a few seconds. He was the star of the same director Jaco Van Dormael's major success The Eighth Day (1996).
- #026
The Angels of Oblivion are played by director Jaco Van Dormael's daughters, Alice van Dormael and Juliette Van Dormael.
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