FILM · 2000 · USA
The Gift
19 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (19)
- #001
The Gift is based on the well-known psychic abilities of Billy Bob Thornton's mother.
- #002
According to Cate Blanchett, for the scene in which Donnie violently breaks into Annie's house and drags Valerie outside, the crew was losing light, time to shoot the film was running short, and the tight schedule allowed no extra days, so Sam Raimi decided to place multiple cameras in different areas of the house at the same time and had the actors perform everything in one continuous take.
- #003
Keanu Reeves and his on-screen wife Hilary Swank visited local domestic abuse counselors to understand why men mistreat their wives and why women stay with their husbands.
- #004
To prepare for her role in this film, Cate Blanchett visited five psychics in one week. One of them told her she needed protection.
- #005
Billy Bob Thornton, the film's co-writer, was asked to play the role that Giovanni Ribisi would later take on.
- #006
After Sam Raimi was hired as the director of Spider-Man (2002), the post-production schedule of this film conflicted with his possible work on that other film. In the end, the two studios agreed to give Raimi more time to complete this film's post-production so that he could work on both films at the same time.
- #007
The cards Annie uses are meant to test ESP/telepathic abilities by guessing which one a person has seen or is thinking of, or by guessing its position in the deck, and so on. Annie appears to use them as a focus point rather than for any "predictions" they might provide.
- #008
The Gift is one of the rare films released by Paramount Pictures under the "Paramount Classics" label, which was intended to be Twentieth Century-Fox's version of the highly successful Fox Searchlight Pictures, releasing small, independently made or non-studio-system films. The label began two years before The Gift's release and finally ended in 2007 with MTV's horror film Beneath.
- #009
This is the second film in which Keanu Reeves plays the villain. The other was The Watcher (2000), released the same year, which he tried to back out of and was forced to make.
- #010
The Gift was shot over a period of 8 weeks.
- #011
Cate Blanchett and Hilary Swank would go on to win Oscars in 2005, in the Supporting Actress and Lead Actress categories respectively.
- #012
In Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), some characters watch this film and enjoy the nude scene featuring Katie Holmes.
- #013
J. K. Simmons and Rosemary Harris would appear together again in Spider-Man (2002), but they never shared a scene in either film.
- #014
The film's cast includes three Oscar winners — Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank and J. K. Simmons — and three Oscar nominees: Greg Kinnear, Rosemary Harris and Danny Elfman.
- #015
Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes would later appear side by side in the series The Kennedys (2011).
- #016
Cate Blanchett's character has three sons. In real life, Blanchett would also have three sons and an adopted daughter.
- #017
The Gift marks Dallas Johnson's debut.
- #018
Rosemary Harris, J. K. Simmons and Cate Blanchett are all part of the Marvel Universe. Harris played Aunt May in Spider-Man (2002), Simmons played J. Jonah Jameson in various Spider-Man films, and Blanchett played Hela in Thor: Ragnarok (2017).
- #019
Though the exact brand is hard to determine, at 15:20 in the timeline, when Annie enters the children's bedroom, one of her sons has a fully assembled 1/48 scale model of the F-84 Thunderjet, a Korean War-era aircraft, on his nightstand.
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