FILM · 2005 · UK
Pride & Prejudice
28 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
28 Interesting Facts About Pride & Prejudice
Interesting Facts (23)
- #001
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Director Joe Wright instructed Keira Knightley never to pout throughout the film. There is, however, one scene of hers that was shot by the second unit while Wright was absent. According to Knightley, Wright still complains that she broke this "pout ban" when he watches the film.
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All the exterior Pemberley scenes, as well as part of the interior including the sculpture gallery, were shot at Chatsworth House, the estate of the Duke of Devonshire. Because the house functions as a private home and is also the most visited stately home in England, most of the interior filming could not take place there and was done instead at Wilton House in Wiltshire.
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The actors playing the Bennet family (Keira Knightley, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Talulah Riley and Carey Mulligan) went to the location of the Bennet house in Kent ahead of the crew before filming began and played Sardines (similar to hide-and-seek in the US) to get to know the house and each other better.
- #009
Dame Emma Thompson did this without appearing in the credits and rewrote the screenplay for free. She received a "Special Thanks" credit at the end of the film. One of the two scenes Thompson wrote was the one in which Charlotte Lucas tells Elizabeth Bennet that she will marry Mr. Collins. The other is the scene in which Elizabeth Bennet tries to tell Mr. Darcy, with Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner present, that Lydia has run off with Mr. Wickham. According to Joe Wright's DVD commentary, having Keira Knightley enter and leave the room here was Thompson's idea.
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Information about the income of Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods) and Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) is seemingly public and is not disclosed. The value of an estate or inheritance was generally widely known among the aristocracy. During the Georgian period it was customary for people to draw their inheritances from a bank that gave them an annual interest rate of four or five percent. Mr. Darcy could thus have inherited two hundred thousand pounds upon his father's death and could now earn ten thousand pounds a year in interest. The novel states that Bingley's father left him an inheritance of about 100,000 pounds from his business ("trade"), so the arithmetic works in his favor. Darcy's inheritance, however, was not only money; it also included Pemberley, the lands and the estates. Darcy's income came not from interest but from rents and revenues, the mark of a gentleman.
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How much interest the characters earn from their inheritances is an important element of the story. Each of the Bennet daughters will inherit only £1,000, meaning they could live on only £40–50 a year. By comparison, in 2017 figures this is about 5,000 US dollars. This makes Mrs. Bennet's desperation to marry off her daughters all the more pressing.
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In the scene where Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Dame Judi Dench) offers to let Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) play the piano, Elizabeth plays a very strange version of the composition heard at the beginning and throughout the film. Elizabeth is in fact playing the film's theme song, but very badly.
- #020
Lady Catherine de Bourgh's (Dame Judi Dench's) dining table scene was the first scene shot for the film. Elizabeth's (Keira Knightley) final conversation with Mr. Wickham (Rupert Friend) under the tree was the last. According to the house's website, filming at Burghley House in Lincolnshire ran from 18-22 July 2004. In the film (and the novel) the house is named "Rosings." Almost all of it was shot on location. The only set built for the film was the Meryton assembly room where Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) and the Bingleys are first introduced, because such assembly halls no longer survive in England, or at least are very hard to find today. Building the set also allowed the crew to create it exactly to their specifications. Filming in such a cramped real location would have been incredibly difficult anyway.
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- #022
The militia uniforms seen in the parade scene came from the Sharpe television film series. At the time, no regiment of the British Infantry had yellow facings and backings on their collars. However, Bernard Cornwell, author of the Sharpe series, created an entirely fictional regiment called "South Essex," which he described as having yellow facings on their collars. The uniforms were created for the Sharpe film series and were obtained from the wardrobe department for this film.
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Behind the Scenes (1)
Characters & Cast (3)
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Two revolving busts of Mr. Darcy were made for the film. One was given to Matthew Macfadyen, who kept it in his downstairs bathroom. The other is in the Chatsworth House Orangery shop where replicas are sold. As ladies queued up to kiss it, staff had to put up a sign asking customers not to kiss the bust of "Mr. Darcy."
Life & Family (1)
- #028
Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) explains to Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) that her sister will receive 30,000 pounds. This sum is the dowry given to her by the family upon her marriage. At 5% interest this would mean an income of 1,500 pounds a year and would make Miss Georgiana Darcy (Tamzin Merchant) a very distinguished young woman. By comparison, Mr. Bennet (Donald Sutherland) agreed to give the married Lydia (Jena Malone) 100 pounds a year, meaning that his own dowry and those of his other four daughters amounted to only 2,000 pounds.
Related pages
- Tom Hardy — Pride & Prejudice comes up in the facts on that page
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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