FILM · 1968 · UK
The Lion in Winter
43 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (43)
- #001
Timothy Dalton was greatly impressed by Katharine Hepburn. On his days off from filming, he came in with her to shoot the reverse angles that a stand-in would normally handle.
- #002
Katharine Hepburn was descended from Eleanor of Aquitaine through numerous family lines, including Eleanor's marriages to King Louis VII of France and King Henry II of England.
- #003
As of 2023, Katharine Hepburn is the only person to have won four Oscars for acting. She won the Best Actress award for Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), this film and On Golden Pond (1981).
- #004
Katharine Hepburn occasionally scolded Peter O'Toole and Anthony Hopkins for arriving on set drunk or hungover.
- #005
When filming on this film was completed, Katharine Hepburn told Peter O'Toole: "When I started in this business, my agent told me 'never act with children and animals,' but you, Peter, are both."
- #006
On the first day of rehearsal, Katharine Hepburn struck her thumb against the theatre's heavy iron door, breaking the nail and leaving a deep cut on her hand. She refused to go to the hospital, however, and insisted on continuing the rehearsal. She also refused stitches, saying the wound would take too long to heal before filming began.
- #007
This was Anthony Hopkins's feature film debut; he had previously appeared in the 40-minute The White Bus (1967). When the young Hopkins voiced his worries about his performance alongside such well-known names as Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn, Hepburn was said to have advised him: "Don't act. Leave it to me; I act everywhere. You don't need to act. You have a good face, a good voice, a big body. Watch Spencer Tracy, watch the real American actors who never act, they just do it. Just show up and say the lines." Hopkins later called it the best acting advice he was ever given.
- #008
Katharine Hepburn, despite her stern warnings, thoroughly enjoyed Peter O'Toole and working with him. She said his strength and energy helped her regain her own vitality at a time when she truly needed it.
- #009
Anthony Hopkins told Jonathan Rhys Meyers that Peter O'Toole was constantly late to the set and that Hopkins could help by imitating his voice off-camera for certain shots. One day O'Toole arrived and saw Hopkins doing his voice, and forbade him from ever doing it again.
- #010
According to director Anthony Harvey, after Katharine Hepburn handed him the Oscar she won for this film, he kept it hidden in a paper bag and a closet for years.
- #011
This was Timothy Dalton's (King Philip II) first feature film. Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were so impressed with him that they offered him the role of James Bond, taking over from Sean Connery, in the upcoming On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Dalton turned the offers down, thinking he was too young, but about twenty years later he played Bond in two films, beginning with The Living Daylights (1987).
- #012
Director Anthony Harvey and art director Peter Murton decided to make the setting as period-accurate as possible. Although the main characters were nobility, they lived in drafty, dirty castles.
- #013
For maximum authenticity, the actors and actresses wore their costumes for as long as possible before shooting a scene so that they would look dirty and worn. Although costume designer Margaret Furse preferred dark-colored garments, Katharine Hepburn persuaded her toward brighter colors for Eleanor, reasoning that she had been in the Middle East and could have owned many vividly colored items.
- #014
This was Peter O'Toole's second time playing King Henry II. The first was in Becket (1964). He was nominated for an Oscar for both performances.
- #015
During filming, Katharine Hepburn affectionately referred to Peter O'Toole as "pig." The two of them would take a break every day at five o'clock with a cigarette and a glass of white wine.
- #016
When Eleanor of Aquitaine asks about Prince Richard's love, she says she has seen paintings of Eleanor in the prime of her beauty. She may be referring to portraits that were later lost to history. No image of Eleanor survives except her tomb effigy. Two paintings traditionally assumed to be of her have not been verified. Many written descriptions praise her beauty, but none include basic features such as her eye or hair color. Based on descriptions of her sons, who were all said to resemble her, she was probably very tall and slender, with a very strong chin, gray or blue eyes, and wavy reddish-gold hair much like that of her descendant Katharine Hepburn.
- #017
Anthony Hopkins, who was working at the Royal National Theatre at the time, had to get permission from Royal National Theatre director Laurence Olivier to take part in the production.
- #018
While filming in France, director Anthony Harvey discovered the stone statues used in the main title sequence along a driveway.
- #019
While shooting close-ups of Richard in his jousting costume, the horse was frightened and bolted. Anthony Hopkins fell and broke his arm. This made it very difficult to shoot the scene with his sword over his jousting opponent.
- #020
Peter O'Toole was five years older than Anthony Hopkins, seven years older than John Castle and 13 years older than Nigel Terry, who played his sons. O'Toole was also 25 years younger than Katharine Hepburn, who played his wife. In real life, Henry II was eleven years younger than Eleanor of Aquitaine. At the Christmas of 1183, when the film is set, Eleanor of Aquitaine, born in 1122, would have been 61, and Henry II, born on 5 March 1133, would have been 50. Hepburn, born on 12 May 1907, was 61 during production, and O'Toole was 36.
- #021
Peter O'Toole said his first choice for Eleanor of Aquitaine was Katharine Hepburn, but he was not sure she would make the film so soon after the death of her longtime partner Spencer Tracy. The other two actresses he could think of for the role were Vivien Leigh and Margaret Rutherford.
- #022
Peter O'Toole had known Katharine Hepburn for years before this production. He named his daughter, born in 1960, Kate O'Toole.
- #023
Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton, John Castle, Jane Merrow and Nigel Stock are all graduates of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
- #024
Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe worked on a rich lighting scheme intended to evoke the feel of illuminated medieval manuscripts.
- #025
In real history, although Henry was eleven years younger than Eleanor, he outlived her by fifteen years (she died in 1189, six years after this film is set). After Henry's death Richard became king, and one of his first acts was to order his mother's release (Henry had kept her imprisoned for sixteen years). While King Richard was away from England on the Crusades and during various imprisonments, she ruled the kingdom in his place. She also lived long enough to see her youngest son, King John, crowned king.
- #026
This was Peter O'Toole's first time filming in his native Ireland.
- #027
Production on The Lion in Winter was halted for a time after director Anthony Harvey contracted hepatitis and the flu.
- #028
The Lion in Winter is Aaron Sorkin's favorite film. He has quoted dialogue from the play in his own writing, particularly in The West Wing (1999).
- #029
The original Broadway stage production, written by James Goldman, opened on March 3, 1966, at the Ambassador Theatre in New York and ran for 92 performances. The cast included Rosemary Harris as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Robert Preston as Henry II and Christopher Walken as King Philip of France. Rosemary Harris won the 1966 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (New York City). In the 1999 revival, Stockard Channing played Eleanor and Laurence Fishburne played Henry II.
- #030
"Fair Rosamund," Henry's favorite mistress, came from the de Clifford family of Norman/English nobility. She was born around 1140 and died in 1176, seven years before the film's setting. After she and Henry parted ways, she moved to Godstow Abbey and died there that year. Henry paid for her lavish tomb.
- #031
It is the only film that year to be nominated for both the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscar.
- #032
The cast rehearsed for two weeks at the Haymarket Theatre in London. Exteriors were shot in Ireland, Wales and France, while interiors were filmed at Ardmore Studios in Dublin.
- #033
Henry II had 8 legitimate children: William, Henry, Richard, Matilda, Geoffrey, Eleanor, Joan and John. In the film, Eleanor mentions several of his illegitimate children, including two sons she accepted among them. One of these sons, Geoffrey of York, was raised by Eleanor and was the only one of Henry's children at his side when he died.
- #034
The film is set in December 1183.
- #035
It was included on the American Film Institute's 2005 list of 250 films nominated for AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.
- #036
The era of Henry and Eleanor marked the beginning of the Plantagenet reign, which would bring many changes to Britain in the centuries that followed.
- #037
In his diaries, Charlton Heston writes that he was offered the role of King Henry II.
- #038
Jane Merrow had played many leading roles in film and television, but she was invited to audition for the role of Alais because of her part in James Kennaway's play Country Dance. Peter O'Toole, already approved for the cast of The Lion in Winter, saw Merrow in Country Dance in June 1967 and conducted her screen test in Hyde Park, reading a scene from Country Dance with her. Merrow recalled being bothered by the wind blowing her hair into her face and thinking "the game was up" when O'Toole stopped the scene and said, "I don't believe a word you're saying." She added, however, that he said, "Let's try it again," and when Merrow was told the next day that she had the part, she felt "suitably humbled by the great O'Toole." (O'Toole would go on to star in Brotherly Love (1970), the film adaptation of Kennaway's novel Household Ghosts, which Kennaway dramatized as Country Dance.)
- #039
Anthony Hopkins's manner of playing Prince Richard recalls Richard Burton, who played Becket in the earlier film of the same name.
- #040
It is the only Best Picture Oscar nominee that year (and not a musical) also nominated for Best Original Score.
- #041
It is Sylvester Stallone's favorite film of all time.
- #042
The film's premiere was held in New York in early November 1968.
- #043
Although the working-class tone of Prince John's accent helps emphasize his "cretin" character, a child of a noble family in 12th-century England would not have been allowed any trace of a lower-class accent.
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