59 Fun Facts About Braveheart

In Braveheart's battle scenes, what colour is the war paint on William Wallace's face?

Blue. The woad-style paint is one of many liberties with history that led The Times, in 2009, to rank Braveheart second on its list of the most inaccurate films.

Who wrote the Braveheart screenplay, sharing a surname with its hero?

Randall Wallace. The American came across the story on a trip to Scotland, and in 2002 he teamed up with Mel Gibson again, directing him in We Were Soldiers.

Braveheart drew on a 15th-century epic poem about Wallace by which Scottish minstrel?

Blind Harry. He wrote more than 150 years after Wallace died and filled the gaps with legend, which is why many of the best-known stories about the hero have no document behind them.

Which French actress plays Princess Isabelle in Braveheart?

Sophie Marceau. The romance is invented: the real Isabella was a small child in France while Wallace was fighting, and she only came to England to marry after his death.

Which actor plays King Edward Longshanks in Braveheart?

Patrick McGoohan. His king dies just as Wallace is executed, but the real Edward I outlived him by almost two years and died marching north for one more campaign.

Who plays Wallace's secretly wed bride, Murron MacClannough?

Catherine McCormack. Murron's execution by the English is what turns Wallace from farmer to rebel: he and the villagers wipe out the garrison in revenge, and the uprising spreads.

Which Scottish actor plays Robert the Bruce?

Angus Macfadyen came back to the part 24 years later: he co-wrote, produced and starred in the 2019 sequel Robert the Bruce, which picks up where Braveheart ends.

Which Irish actor plays Wallace's giant childhood friend Hamish?

Brendan Gleeson had spent about a decade as a schoolteacher in Dublin, and gave up the classroom for full-time acting only a few years before he was cast as Hamish.

Which studio put up two-thirds of Braveheart's budget in exchange for foreign distribution rights?

20th Century Fox backed the right half: nearly two-thirds of the film's box office came from outside the US and Canada.

Which director turned down the chance to direct Braveheart?

Terry Gilliam, co-director of the medieval spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail, said no; Gibson, who had at first passed on the script himself, ended up directing.

Which actor did Gibson consider for the lead in Braveheart when he planned only to direct?

Brad Pitt was the name Gibson toyed with, because he felt about a decade too old to play Wallace himself; he took the part reluctantly to get the film financed.

Most of the shoot moved from the UK to which country after it offered 1,600 army reservists as extras?

The reservists were allowed to grow beards, and to save money the same extras played both the Scottish and English armies.

Which Ron Howard film lost the Best Picture Oscar to Braveheart?

Apollo 13. Braveheart's win was an upset: it had lost every major best-picture prize handed out before the Oscars.

Which flower does the young Murron give William at his father's burial in Braveheart?

A thistle. William keeps it for years, and when he comes home as a grown man he hands the dried flower back to Murron wrapped in cloth.

Who composed Braveheart's score, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra?

James Horner was up against himself at the Oscars that year: two of the nominated dramatic scores were his, and both lost to Il Postino.

In Braveheart, to whom does Wallace say "Every man dies, not every man really lives"?

Isabelle. Wallace says it in his cell the night before his execution, when the princess begs him to swear allegiance and be spared, and the line became the film's tagline.

Which film beat Braveheart to the Original Screenplay Oscar?

The Usual Suspects. Braveheart's script had won the Writers Guild award days earlier, but Oscar voters preferred Christopher McQuarrie's whodunit.

Which directing prize did Mel Gibson win for Braveheart in the run-up to the Oscars?

Golden Globe for Best Director. Gibson took it even though the film itself lost the Globe for best drama to Sense and Sensibility; at the Oscars it won both prizes.

In Braveheart, how does Longshanks dispose of Phillip, his son's newly named high counsellor?

Throws him from a window, moments after asking what military advice he would offer; the prince pulls a dagger on his father in reply and is beaten down.

Which British film magazine's 2005 poll named Braveheart the worst film ever to win Best Picture?

Empire. The turnaround took a decade: the magazine's readers had voted Braveheart the best film of 1995 at the first Empire Awards.

In Braveheart, how does the grown Wallace win his rock-throwing contest with Hamish?

He hits him with a small stone, square on the forehead, after standing still while Hamish's boulder sails past: his point is that a fight is won with the head, not the arm.

What became of the Gibson-as-Wallace statue that stood for over a decade at the Wallace Monument car park?

Returned to its sculptor when its lease ran out. Critics hated seeing Scotland's hero with a film star's face, but he says the tourists loved it.

Historian Sharon Krossa complains that Braveheart's Scots wear what, unknown before the 16th century?

Belted plaid, and wrong twice over: when Highlanders did adopt it centuries later, they never wore it the film's way. Krossa compared it to colonial Americans in back-to-front business suits.

Which supposed feudal right, invoked by Longshanks in Braveheart, do medieval scholars regard as a myth?

Jus primae noctis, a lord's supposed claim on a bride's wedding night. Scholars who call it a myth point out that the writers asserting it never cite any trustworthy evidence.

Braveheart's version of the Scots' 1297 victory near Stirling leaves out which key feature?

The bridge. The real Scots won by trapping the English as they crossed a narrow bridge over the Forth; the film stages a head-on clash in an open field.

Braveheart shows Irish conscripts in Edward I's army at Falkirk, but much of his real infantry there was what?

Welsh. On the march north his Welsh and English troops came to blows, and the Welsh threatened to walk out and join the Scots.

Braveheart gives Robert the Bruce's father which affliction, which the real Robert allegedly had late in life?

Leprosy. In the film this leper father arranges Wallace's capture, but the real elder Bruce had died in 1304, the year before Wallace was taken.

Braveheart implies Wallace fathered which future English king, who was really born seven years after Wallace died?

Edward III. The real Isabella was a child still living in France during Wallace's revolt, and she married Edward II only in 1308, three years after Wallace's execution.

Braveheart's portrayal of Longshanks' son, Prince Edward, drew accusations of what against Gibson?

Homophobia. The gay-rights group GLAAD took aim at the film before it had even opened, over the king killing his son's lover; Gibson has denied that the film is homophobic.

What does Wallace shout at his execution in Braveheart instead of begging for mercy?

Freedom! The magistrate promises a quick death if he will only cry mercy, and by the end the watching crowd is calling the word out for him.

In Braveheart, how does Wallace reach the traitor Mornay to kill him?

On horseback, into his bedroom: Wallace gallops up the castle stairs and bursts in as Mornay wakes from a nightmare about him. Mornay had taken Longshanks' bribe to abandon the field at Falkirk.

Which English city does Wallace sack in Braveheart?

York. The real Wallace raided Northumberland and Cumberland in 1297 and besieged Carlisle, but never came near York, and he never killed a nephew of the king as the film has him do.

Braveheart ends at which 1314 battle, with Robert the Bruce leading the Scots to victory?

Bannockburn. The film plays it as a spur-of-the-moment charge, but the real Bruce had been king for eight years by then and had spent them fighting a guerrilla war.

Who was the co-commander alongside Wallace at the real 1297 victory near Stirling?

Andrew Moray had raised the north of Scotland while Wallace raised the south. Mortally wounded in the battle, he died that autumn, and the film leaves him out altogether.

What was the first act definitely known to have been carried out by the real Wallace, in May 1297?

Killing the sheriff of Lanark, an Englishman named William Heselrig. A 15th-century poem made it revenge for the killing of Wallace's wife, the unproven version the film follows.

In Braveheart Wallace is seized in Edinburgh, but near which city was the real Wallace captured in 1305?

Glasgow. He was taken at Robroyston, just outside the city, by John de Menteith, a Scottish knight in Edward's service, and not through Bruce's father as the film has it.

After Wallace's execution in 1305, where was his tarred head displayed as a warning?

London Bridge. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield, and his limbs were sent north for display in Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth.

Which rival was killed in a Dumfries church during a quarrel with Robert the Bruce, weeks before Bruce was crowned?

John Comyn. He and Bruce had shared the Guardianship after Wallace gave it up, as bitter rivals; whether Bruce or his followers struck the fatal blow, he took the crown six weeks later.

Which nickname for Longshanks is painted in Latin on his plain marble tomb in Westminster Abbey?

Hammer of the Scots. The words were painted on only in the 16th century; Edward himself died in 1307, almost two years after Wallace and not on the same day as in the film.

The Wallace Monument near Stirling displays which relic said to have been Wallace's own?

A two-handed sword, more than five feet long. The tower that holds it stands on Abbey Craig, the rock from which Wallace is said to have watched the English army gather in 1297.

Where is the real Robert the Bruce's heart buried, separately from his body?

Melrose Abbey. At his own request the heart first went on crusade with Sir James Douglas, who was killed fighting in Spain; it is believed to have been brought home afterwards for burial.

The real Robert the Bruce had himself crowned King of Scots in 1306 at which traditional coronation site?

Scone. The famous Stone of Scone was missing: Edward I had carried it off to Westminster Abbey ten years earlier, so Bruce was crowned without it.

Which 2018 Netflix film, starring Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce, picks up roughly where Braveheart's story ends?

Outlaw King. It follows Bruce from the Scottish surrender of 1304 to his victory at Loudoun Hill in 1307; Braveheart's own sequel, Robert the Bruce, followed in 2019 with the 1995 film's Bruce back in the role.

Which formation, a bristling ring of long spears, did Wallace's army use at the real Battle of Falkirk?

Schiltron. The spear rings stopped Edward's cavalry, but once his archers went to work on the packed ranks the formations broke and the Scots fled.

Gibson says a rearing horse nearly crushed him during a Braveheart battle scene; who pulled him clear?

His stunt double ran in and dragged him out of the way just as the horse toppled backwards. Gibson put the cast's total battle injuries at a broken ankle, a hangnail and a busted nose.

Which company, co-founded by Mel Gibson, made Braveheart as an independent film?

Icon Productions. With Gibson's own company producing and the big studios only buying distribution rights, a trade body in 2010 named Braveheart one of the 30 most significant independent films of 30 years.

Which star was approached to play King Edward in Braveheart but declined?

Sean Connery, who was busy filming Just Cause. Gibson says hearing him pronounce 'goulash' over dinner was a lesson in itself for his own Scottish accent.

Warner Bros. offered to fund Braveheart on the condition that Gibson signed for what?

Another Lethal Weapon sequel. Gibson refused and found the money elsewhere, yet Lethal Weapon 4 was made anyway, three years after Braveheart.

Which producer took the Braveheart script with him when he left MGM in 1993?

Alan Ladd Jr. had just stepped down as MGM's chairman. He took the script with him, set up the meeting that won Gibson over, and ended up sharing the Best Picture Oscar as a producer.

Not every horse in Braveheart's battle scenes was real; what did the crew use instead?

Mechanical horses, built for the battle sequences. The ones that crash head first in the cavalry charge are fakes on tracks, which somersault at the end and pitch their riders forward.

Which future Succession star has a small role in Braveheart as the man who raises young William?

Brian Cox. He spent 1995 in both of that year's Scottish epics, playing Wallace's guardian here and a scheming estate factor in the other.

What does 'Alba gu bràth', the Gaelic war cry Wallace roars after his big speech in Braveheart, mean?

Scotland forever. Wallace bellows it to finish his speech before the battle at Stirling, and the whole army roars it back at him.

Braveheart was the ninth film to win Best Picture without what?

Any acting nominations. Gibson went home with two Oscars, as director and as producer, yet neither he nor anyone else in the cast was shortlisted for a performance.

Gibson says the Highland glen where Braveheart's village was built turned out to have Europe's highest what?

Rainfall. So the crew in Glen Nevis, near Fort William, kept shooting straight through it, and at times made the downpour heavier with fire hoses.

Braveheart's princess, the real Isabella of France, later overthrew her husband Edward II with whose help?

Roger Mortimer, an exiled baron who became her lover in France. They crossed to England together in 1326 and drove Edward II from power, the real version of the revenge she promises in the film.

Which 1320 letter to the Pope, sent in Robert the Bruce's reign, vowed that Scots would never accept English rule?

Declaration of Arbroath. The barons wrote it to persuade the Pope to recognise Bruce as lawful king, vowing that 'as long as a hundred of us remain alive' they would never be brought under English rule.

Which actor was Gibson's first choice to play William Wallace before he took the part himself?

Jason Patric. Gibson, then in his late thirties, thought himself a decade too old to play Wallace, but the studio would only pay with him on screen.

Roger Ebert said Braveheart had the 'grungy ferocity' of which earlier Mel Gibson film?

The Road Warrior. Ebert gave Braveheart three and a half stars out of four yet doubted its history, writing that Gibson "is not filming history here, but myth".

In Braveheart, who raises young William after his father and brother are killed?

His uncle Argyle, who arrives for the burial and takes the boy away. When William reaches for his blade, Argyle taps the boy's temple: first learn to use this, then he will teach him to fight.