FILM · 1986 · USA
Peggy Sue Got Married
62 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (62)
- #001
In the original screenplay, Rosalie, the woman in the wheelchair at Peggy Sue's high school reunion, was a gymnast crippled in an accident. In the original screenplay Peggy Sue tried to use her knowledge of the future: she invented pantyhose, encouraged people to invest in Xerox, and tried to stop Rosalie from harming herself.
- #002
The light blue 1958 Chevrolet Impala convertible driven by Nicolas Cage was later given away in a sweepstakes tied to the film's opening.
- #003
It contains Kathleen Turner's only Oscar-nominated performance.
- #004
In "Visiting" in 1960, Peggy Sue warns her sister about eating red M&Ms. Red M&Ms were discontinued in 1976, when Red Dye #2 was suspected of being carcinogenic. In 1986, after the film was released, red M&Ms were reintroduced with a different red dye.
- #005
It was John Carradine's last film (the scenes he shot for an unproduced film were later added to Evil Spawn (1987), which was made after this film was completed).
- #006
Kathleen Turner usually feels her roles intensely. On this film she had terrifying nightmares in which her dead grandmother telephoned her, similar to what Peggy Sue feels in the telephone scene.
- #007
In 2008 Nicolas Cage filed a defamation lawsuit against Kathleen Turner over her memoir "Send Yourself Roses," in which she claimed he had been arrested twice and had stolen a dog.
- #008
Sofia Coppola (daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola) plays Peggy Sue's younger sister. Sofia would later direct Kathleen Turner in The Virgin Suicides (1999).
- #009
Nicolas Cage based his character's voice on Pokey from The Gumby Show (1956). Francis Ford Coppola and the producers hated the voice and Cage was nearly fired. However, Cage managed to convince Coppola that he had made a good choice.
- #010
In a 2018 interview with David Marchese on the Vulture website, Kathleen Turner said she was surprised when she first heard on the set of Peggy Sue Got Married the voice Nicolas Cage chose to use while playing her love interest, but that she did not consider another actor's performance to be the director's business. Instead she spoke with the film's director, Francis Ford Coppola, and asked whether he approved of Cage's choice. When Coppola would not intervene, Turner said she managed it by choosing to interact with Cage's character in a way that explained her character's ultimate disillusionment with the past.
- #011
The film's opening scene is an optical illusion. Because the camera and crew would be visible in the mirror's reflection if the scene had been shot conventionally, a stand-in for Kathleen Turner is positioned on the other side of the "mirror" (only her back is visible in the shot), mirroring the star's movements in reverse to create the illusion that Turner and Helen Hunt are the reflection, when in fact they are the real performers in the frame and a stand-in with her back to the camera sits in front of them, before an empty mirror frame framing a hole in the set wall. Unfortunately, this optical illusion becomes obviously deceptive and unconvincing when Kathleen Turner's and her double's actions fail to match and the "mirror image" then sits back down in front of her unsteadily, while on this side, in front of the mirror, no one is seated.
- #012
The poem Michael Fitzsimmons quotes on the hill is William Butler Yeats's (1865-1939) "When You Are Old."
- #013
Sofia Coppola and Nicolas Cage are cousins in real life.
- #014
This was Leon Ames's last film before his death on October 12, 1993, at the age of 91.
- #015
When Peggy Sue faints while donating blood and her friends drive her home, the car radio is playing "Tequila." The radio station is KFRC San Francisco, which changed its live programming for the film.
- #016
At the high school reunion, when Peggy Sue is crowned queen, Marshall Crenshaw sings Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue." Crenshaw went on to play Buddy Holly in La Bamba (1987).
- #017
Dennis Quaid turned down the role of Charlie Bodell to appear in The Big Easy (1986).
- #018
When Debra Winger was set to star, she wanted Penny Marshall to direct the film. Marshall met with Tom Hanks and Sean Penn for the male lead, but the producers, who felt the film was too big for a first-time director, fired her three weeks into pre-production.
- #019
In one scene, Evelyn displays jewelry she wants to sell with a man in her living room. She lies to Peggy Sue about who the man is and asks her not to tell her father anything about it. Although it is never mentioned again, there are deleted scenes in the script that explain this. One of them is a conversation between Peggy Sue and her father about how bad business is at the hat shop; Peggy Sue "predicts" that men will stop wearing hats once Kennedy is elected president. The next scene is an argument between Evelyn and Jack, in which Evelyn tells him she doesn't need her grandmother's jewelry or her parents' money. Clearly, there was supposed to be a subplot about her parents' shaky financial situation, but it was abandoned.
- #020
In the opening title sequence, the backgrounds begin in very bright colors (hot pink, electric blue, etc.), but about halfway through they suddenly turn entirely gray. This is later reflected in the period when Peggy Sue is in 1960 — the clothes worn by the high school students are mostly gray or white or off-white, pale yellow, and other muted neutrals and pastels, with a few exceptions.
- #021
Barry Miller was 28 years old when he starred in "Peggy Sue Got Married" in 1986. In the opening reunion scene, he played a wealthy and disillusioned 43-year-old businessman, and in the "past" time-travel scenes, a 16-year-old high school science student who is bullied. Some critics had no idea that Miller had made a deep impression on audiences with his role as Bobby C. in "Saturday Night Fever" (1977), or that he had given an exciting, star-making performance as a Spanish stand-up comedian in Alan Parker's "Fame" (1980). His performance was called "a magnificent first film directed by Francis Ford Coppola."
- #022
"Peggy Sue Got Married" was halted mid-production because of Nicolas Cage's controversial acting choices regarding his character's strange voice and appearance. Shocked by the first footage, studio executives flew to the location to beg Francis Coppola to rein in or replace his nephew immediately. Cage initially wanted to play the Richard Norvik "nerd" character (played by Barry Miller) instead of the romantic lead, because he thought it would better showcase his acting range. As filming progressed, Miller's performance transformed the script's more comedic and stereotypical "nerd" character into a much more complex and dramatic figure; this, following Cage's attempts to turn the romantic lead into a more eccentric and odd personality, resulted in a direct order from the studio to reshoot several scenes, as well as the film's ending, in order to make Miller's character more romantically appealing and sympathetic to the audience.
- #023
Throughout the film, the phrase "Why, I oughta…" always makes everyone laugh instantly. It was originally a catchphrase from one of Moe Howard's short films with The Three Stooges.
- #024
The film made the Top 10 list of Best Films of 1986 (1987). Gene Siskel ranked it 5th and Roger Ebert ranked it 9th.
- #025
Ginger Taylor plays Janet (Charlie's 1980s girlfriend), but her scenes were deleted. However, she is listed in the end credits.
- #026
Part of Nicolas Cage's technique for Charlie's unusual voice involved not only basing it on the animated character Pokey from The Gumby Show (1956), but also wearing a set of false teeth that gave him a distinct overbite.
- #027
The entire film was shot in Sonoma County, in the California towns of Petaluma and Santa Rosa. While the producers used existing locations such as Peggy Sue's turn-of-the-century Victorian house and Santa Rosa High School, several sets — including the mountain top, the Masonic Hall and Peggy Sue's bedroom — were built on a stage in Santa Rosa. Production began on August 19, 1985 and was completed in late October. Although it was scheduled for release in May 1986, Coppola put the film back into production in the spring of 1986 to shoot a new ending after realizing there were "not enough tears."
- #028
Kevin J. O'Connor plays Michael Fitzsimmons, who considers Ernest Hemingway a terrible writer. O'Connor would go on to play Hemingway two years later in The Moderns (1988).
- #029
In addition to the opening scene being a fake mirror shot, the closing scene uses the same technique, and unfortunately both scenes are extremely unconvincing because the actors' movements on either side of the mirror do not match.
- #030
The woman who recalls Peggy Sue's grandparents' past life in Ireland and "mentions names, dates and places" is a reference to Bridey Murphy (Virginia Tighe), who attracted public attention in the early 1950s with claims of past-life regression under hypnosis. 'Bridey' actually mentioned many names, dates and places, very few of which could be verified in any way (and none of whose accuracy was ever conclusively proven), but from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, published stories about Tighe's previous life as 'Bridey' had a persistent following among a small core group of followers who believed Tighe's stories and accepted them as evidence of past lives.
- #031
Some of the actors playing teenagers in the film were closer to adulthood than to their characters' teenage years. At the time of filming, Catherine Hicks was 34, Glenn Withrow and Wil Shriner were 31-32, Lucinda Jenney, Kathleen Turner and Don Stark were 31, Lisa Jane Persky was 30, Joan Allen and Sachi Parker were 29, Barry Miller was 27, Jim Carrey was 23 and Nicolas Cage was 21.
- #032
It is the second of two films in which the main character travels back in time within their own subconscious, with music by John Barry. In Somewhere in Time (1980), Richard Collier achieves this through meditation, while Peggy Sue experiences it after a heart attack.
- #033
Among the final cast is Randy Bourne as Peggy Sue's son Scott Bodell. Although Peggy Sue mentions her son Scott several times, Scott never appears on screen or in any of the many photographs in the film. This is the only credit for the unseen Randy Bourne.
- #034
In this film, Don Murray plays Helen Hunt's grandfather. In Quarterback Princess (1983), he plays her father.
- #035
The song performed by Charlie, Walter, Leon and Terry is "I Wonder Why." It was first recorded in 1958 by Dion and the Belmonts and was their first national hit.
- #036
The writers added a subtle irony to the script. At the end of the film, the adult Peggy Sue living in her past turns out to be smarter, more experienced and more understanding than all the men in her life: Charlie, Richard, Michael Fitzsimmons, even her father. The only man she cannot leave behind is her grandfather.
- #037
In the record booth at Bodell's, Charlie tells Peggy Sue that the two of them always do better when things go wrong and when there are arguments between them. This actually foreshadows the film's ending and their possible future together.
- #038
Written by the husband-and-wife team of Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner, the film began as a fifty-page treatment sent to producer Paul Gurian in July 1983. Gurian, who was intrigued by the proposal, helped the writers develop the screenplay.
- #039
The film premiered on 5 October 1986 as the closing-night presentation of the New York Film Festival, and then opened in theaters on 8 October.
- #040
It was among the 500 films on the American Film Institute's 2000 list of nominees for the 100 Funniest American Movies.
- #041
This is one of two 1986 time-travel films in which Catherine Hicks (Carol Heath) played a supporting role. The other is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).
- #042
The film is set in 1985 and 1960.
- #043
Through effective use of costume, Peggy Sue is never seen dressed for the present in the film's bookends, and so never manages to fit her surroundings temporally. She is first seen wearing her 1960 party dress at her 25th reunion, where she was the only person dressed out of period. Nor is she filmed in contemporary clothes at the end of the film, appearing only under the hospital bed covers as she tries to grasp the reality of her time-travel experience. Similarly, unlike her classmates, no attempt is made to make Peggy Sue look young again beyond putting her hair in a ponytail, because Kathleen Turner is reliving her high-school days unnoticed.
- #044
Charlie (Nicolas Cage) begs Peggy to marry him, saying he doesn't know what the future may bring; he could even lose an arm. In Cage's next film, Moonstruck (1987), he played a baker who loses a hand.
- #045
Buddy Holly song titles appear as part of various characters' dialogue throughout the film. One example is Nicolas Cage saying: "Oh boy."
- #046
A French film released in 2012 ("Camille Rewinds") is an explicit homage to and revisionist remake of "Peggy Sue Got Married." Taking on all the main characters and the plot, it is a restructured and more feminist interpretation of the film's themes; the protagonist emerges independently at the end as a single mother and does not return to the nuclear family structure. Another aspect of this remake is that the Richard Norvick "nerd" character (played by Barry Miller in Coppola's 1986 original) becomes a more attractive object of sexual desire for the protagonist, the only male figure who expresses such strong feelings in his search for romantic understanding.
- #047
When Charlie scolds Peggy Sue for her new interest in Michael, he calls him "Maynard G. Beatnik." This references the then-popular series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959) and Bob Denver's famous comic portrayal of the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs.
- #048
Joan Allen was to play the adult female lead in Pleasantville (1998), a film compared to Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Back to the Future (1985), though the film's protagonists actually enter a 1950s sitcom rather than traveling back in time.
- #049
Nicolas Cage and Joan Allen were to star together in Face/Off (1997).
- #050
Kathleen Turner and Jim Carrey later played former lovers in Dumb and Dumber To (2014).
- #051
This is the second film in which Barbara Harris played a mother caught up with her daughter in a supernatural situation, after Freaky Friday (1976).
- #052
Jonathan Demme, originally set to direct ''Peggy Sue Got Married'', left the project in the fall of 1984 over "creative differences" with Debra Winger, with whom he was to star. Eighteen years later Winger would act under Demme's direction in a similarly named (but otherwise unrelated) film: Rachel Getting Married (2008).
- #053
Released a year after Back to the Future, these two time-travel films share many elements: meeting one's own parents, going to high school about 25 years earlier, a "square peg" student who wants to be a writer, a character hoping to succeed in the music business, a diner that is a teenage hangout, school dances as key plot devices, a classic song from the future given as a gift in the past, a Black R&B group joined by the white star, and a successful book published in the present. The biggest difference is that while Peggy Sue undergoes major changes, the only character who does not change is Marty McFly.
- #054
The mirror drawing device represents the concept of a parallel universe. One Peggy Sue is the original timeline; the other Peggy Sue tried to change the past but discovered that the events of her 18th birthday are an unchangeable Flashpoint. They are not the same, but the outcomes are essentially identical. It is like the ending of The Wizard of Oz: whether the viewer believes the character really went on this great adventure or merely had an elaborate dream, the result is nearly the same.
- #055
The film features three Oscar winners — Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola and Helen Hunt — as well as four nominees: Kathleen Turner, Joan Allen, Barbara Harris and Don Murray. Barry Miller was cast by Francis Coppola after winning a Tony Award for his first Broadway performance.
- #056
Sachi Parker is the only established actor in the film who also had a notable role in the other mid-1980s time-travel movie, Back to the Future (1985).
- #057
Playing a member of the high school's biggest team in this film mirrors Catherine Hicks's real-life experience as a high school cheerleader.
- #058
Another film set in the mid-20th century, Inventing the Abbotts (1997), was to include scenes shot at Santa Rosa High School. Santa Rosa High School had been planned as a shooting location for Scream (1996), but the local school board withdrew permission out of fear that students' final exams would be disrupted (though the general belief is that the board ultimately found the film's content distasteful).
- #059
While Peggy and Michael talk about literature in the cafeteria, Michael argues that Jack Kerouac had no need to kill a bull in order to stage a conspiracy, and Peggy Sue then quotes Hemingway about a bull that will not die. In Kerouac's works (Tristessa and others) there is a character who uses the nickname Bull and later dies.
- #060
Mary Leichtling's debut.
- #061
During the dance, the kids got into serious arguments about 1960 major league baseball. Each member of the Detroit Tigers' starting rotation — Jim Bunning, Frank Lary, Don Mossi and Paul Foytack — had the potential to win 20 games, but only Bunning and Lary reached that mark, and only Lary did so in 1960 or later. As for which was the better double-play combination, the White Sox pair of Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox were elected to the Hall of Fame but never won a World Series together, appearing only in 1959, while Bobby Richardson and Tony Kubek helped the Yankees reach the Series every year from 1957 to 1964 (except 1959) and won three of them, yet neither was a serious candidate for the Hall.
- #062
Martin Scott's debut.
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