50 Fun Facts About Cloud Atlas

The title Cloud Atlas comes from a piece by composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, once married to which famous artist?

Yoko Ono was married to Toshi Ichiyanagi before John Lennon, whose music inspired the author's previous novel. He said the coincidence pleased him, and that he bought the CD just for the track's beautiful title.

Which actor plays six roles in the film Cloud Atlas, from a thieving hotel manager to the tribesman Zachry?

Tom Hanks kept the project alive: when the studio withdrew its money, he told the directors he was in and asked when they would start. The rest of the cast followed him onto the plane.

Which sibling filmmakers wrote and directed the film Cloud Atlas together with Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer?

The Wachowskis, makers of The Matrix, shot the 1849 story and the two future ones while Tom Tykwer filmed the other three with a separate crew. They put about $7 million of their own money into it.

What kind of institution is Aurora House, which Timothy Cavendish enters in Cloud Atlas believing it is a hotel?

A nursing home is where Cavendish has unwittingly committed himself, with all contact with the outside world forbidden. He breaks out with three fellow residents and turns the ordeal into a screenplay.

The birthmark that recurs on main characters throughout Cloud Atlas is shaped like which heavenly body?

A comet is the shape of the mark, one thread in a web of repeated motifs that ties the novel's six central characters together across continents and centuries.

Which star of romantic comedies took on six roles in the film Cloud Atlas, among them a far-future cannibal chief?

Hugh Grant was offered five parts and asked the directors for a sixth. He later said the film saved his career by reviving his love of character acting after years of romantic leads.

To what object did the author of Cloud Atlas liken its structure when calling the novel unfilmable?

A Russian doll was his image: six stories nested inside one another, five of them broken off halfway. He doubted any cinema audience would sit through a film that begins six times.

Which actress, who broke her foot just before filming, plays both Luisa Rey and Meronym in the film Cloud Atlas?

Halle Berry was injured two days before her first scenes, so the directors rebuilt the whole shooting schedule rather than recast her. A co-star brought her coffee and soup between takes.

Which English novelist wrote Cloud Atlas and appears briefly in its film version as a double agent?

David Mitchell turns up in the film's 22nd-century section, having once been sure the book could never reach the screen. He went on to call the finished adaptation magnificent.

What does Cloud Atlas suggest links its main characters across six eras, an idea the film shows by reusing actors?

Reincarnation is the thread: the author said all but one of the main characters are the same soul in different bodies. He meant it as a symbol of a human nature that never changes.

In which present-day country is Nea So Copros, the corporate state where the clone Sonmi-451 lives in Cloud Atlas?

Korea is the setting, reimagined as a 22nd-century state rooted in corporate culture where vat-grown clones do the menial work. The film dates Sonmi's story to 2144.

What is Luisa Rey's profession in Cloud Atlas as she investigates the Seaboard power plant in 1970s California?

A journalist on a gossip magazine, she gets her tip from an elderly scientist she meets in a stalled elevator. Her late father had been a war correspondent.

What does the gangster Dermot Hoggins do in Cloud Atlas that turns his memoir into an overnight bestseller?

Hoggins murders a reviewer who had savaged the memoir, and the notoriety sends sales soaring. His family then comes after Timothy Cavendish for a share of the money.

What kind of composition is Robert Frobisher's masterpiece in Cloud Atlas, written for overlapping soloists?

A sextet for six different instruments gives the novel its name, and the book has six overlapping stories of its own. Frobisher completes it shortly before his death and posts it to his lover.

Which cause does Adam Ewing vow to join at the close of Cloud Atlas after the stowaway Autua saves his life?

The abolition of slavery becomes his cause once Autua, a man he saw flogged as a slave, gets him to swallow salt water to purge a poison. In the film he and his wife leave San Francisco to take it up.

Where is the post-apocalyptic central story of Cloud Atlas, told by the tribesman Zachry, set?

Hawaii is home to Zachry's Valley Folk, who worship Sonmi as a goddess and treat her testimony as scripture. Theirs is the only one of the six stories told without a break.

For which major literary award was Cloud Atlas shortlisted, losing out to Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty?

The Booker Prize shortlist of 2004 included it, three years after the author's previous novel had made the same list. It did take the literary fiction prize at the British Book Awards.

Which famous critic gave the film Cloud Atlas four stars out of four while Time magazine named it the year's worst?

Roger Ebert called it one of the most ambitious films ever made and said that after two viewings he wanted a third. It landed on both best-of and worst-of lists for 2012.

Which tech billionaire recommended the novel Cloud Atlas on his summer reading list during the 2020 lockdowns?

Bill Gates picked it sixteen years after it appeared, in a list of books and other things to do at home. A year earlier The Guardian had ranked it ninth among the best books of the century so far.

Which actor plays both the trapped Timothy Cavendish and the ageing composer Vyvyan Ayrs in the film Cloud Atlas?

Jim Broadbent also turns up as a sea captain in the 1849 story. He later blamed the weak box office on its being an independent production that needed more money behind its release.

What kind of facility is the Seaboard HYDRA plant that Luisa Rey learns is unsafe in Cloud Atlas?

A nuclear reactor is the danger, and the physicist whose report proves it is soon found dead. The film adds a motive: the man running the plant secretly serves oil interests.

What name does Cloud Atlas give the vat-grown clones who serve as cheap labour in Sonmi-451's world?

Fabricants are kept docile and promised retirement after a twelve-year contract. Sonmi-451 learns the promise is a lie when she sees what happens to those who finish.

Where is the clone Sonmi-451 put to work under a twelve-year contract at the start of her story in Cloud Atlas?

A fast-food diner called Papa Song's employs her as a waitress until a professor and a student smuggle her out and send her to university.

What is Timothy Cavendish's trade in Cloud Atlas before a gangster's family drives him out of London?

Publisher of vanity books, the 65-year-old Cavendish flees when his bestselling client's relatives demand money. Safely home at the end, he plans to bring out Luisa Rey's story himself.

How does the novel Cloud Atlas complete its five interrupted stories once the central tale has been told?

In reverse order: the book climbs through six stories to the far future, then steps back down to the 19th century. The film dropped the mirror design and jumps between all six eras throughout.

In which country, at the historic Babelsberg studio, did shooting of the film Cloud Atlas begin?

Germany supplied the base camp and much of the money, including about $20 million in public film funds. Some of the country's press called it the first attempt at a home-grown blockbuster.

Who tricks Timothy Cavendish into Aurora House in Cloud Atlas after promising him a hiding place?

His brother Denholme sends him there; in the film it is revenge for Timothy's affair with Denholme's wife. Denholme had already appeared in the author's debut novel.

Which actress, seen reading the novel on the set of V for Vendetta, introduced Cloud Atlas to its future directors?

Natalie Portman raved about the book between scenes in 2005, and soon both siblings were obsessively parsing it. She was later among the actors asked to star, though she is not in the film.

Which actor's six roles in the film Cloud Atlas include a hired killer and the tyrannical Nurse Noakes?

Hugo Weaving also plays a devil only Zachry can see, and relished hissing its lines so much on set that the directors giggled with joy.

Which actor plays the young composer Robert Frobisher in the film Cloud Atlas, as well as a record store clerk?

Ben Whishaw also plays a woman, Georgette, in the present-day story. His Frobisher finishes his masterpiece and shoots himself moments before his lover arrives.

In which country does Robert Frobisher go to work for the ageing composer Vyvyan Ayrs in the novel Cloud Atlas?

Belgium is the setting: Ayrs lives at Zedelghem, near Bruges, and Frobisher's story is told as Letters from Zedelghem. He arrives in 1931, disowned and penniless.

To whom does Robert Frobisher write his letters in Cloud Atlas, a lover who reappears decades later as a scientist?

Rufus Sixsmith is the thread between two stories: decades on he is the whistleblower Luisa Rey meets in a stalled elevator, and she finds the letters in his hotel room.

Which character slowly poisons Adam Ewing in Cloud Atlas while claiming to treat him for a parasite?

Henry Goose, the ship's doctor and Ewing's only friend aboard, invents the illness so he can dose his patient to death and take his valuables.

What is the drugged food fed to the clones of Cloud Atlas called, which proves to be made from their own dead?

Soap keeps the clones docile, and Sonmi-451 learns its secret aboard a ship where retired workers are slaughtered instead of being set free.

What are the advanced visitors called who send Meronym to live among Zachry's people in Cloud Atlas?

The Prescients keep some of the technology lost in the Fall and visit the valley only occasionally. In the film they are dying of a plague and hoping to call for help from other worlds.

At which city's film festival did Cloud Atlas premiere to a ten-minute standing ovation?

Toronto gave it a rapturous first night in September 2012, but general audiences were cooler: it opened second at the US box office and CinemaScore polls graded it C+.

In which country was the film Cloud Atlas released with nearly 40 minutes cut, including its love scenes?

China saw a version shorn of nudity, a sex scene and numerous conversations when the film opened there in January 2013, three months after its American release.

Which Italian writer's novel of interrupted, unfinished stories inspired the nested structure of Cloud Atlas?

Italo Calvino leaves the tales in If on a winter's night a traveler broken off. The author of Cloud Atlas put a mirror at the centre of his own book so that each story could be finished.

What does Cloud Atlas call the holographic device that records Sonmi-451's testimony and later reaches Zachry?

An orison is an egg-shaped gadget in the novel, part phone and part 3-D projector. The film-makers redesigned it so that characters would not be running around with eggs in their pockets.

Which British city doubled for both San Francisco and London in the film Cloud Atlas?

Glasgow played both cities, and other Scottish scenes feature the then-new Clackmannanshire Bridge. The Pacific island stories, meanwhile, were shot in the mountains of a Mediterranean island.

On which remote Pacific archipelago does Adam Ewing's journal open in Cloud Atlas, as his ship waits for repairs?

The Chatham Islands, a far-flung outpost of New Zealand, are where Ewing watches an overseer flog an enslaved man who will later hide in his cabin.

To which Indigenous people of the islands where Cloud Atlas opens does the enslaved stowaway Autua belong?

Moriori islanders, pacifists by tradition, were massacred or enslaved by invaders from the mainland in the 1830s, the history behind Autua's flogging.

In which fictional California city is the Luisa Rey thriller of the novel Cloud Atlas set?

Buenas Yerbas exists only in the novel. The film moved the story to the real San Francisco and shifted its date from 1975 to 1973.

What name do Zachry's people give the devil who whispers temptations to him in Cloud Atlas?

Old Georgie is a devil only Zachry can see, and in the film he urges Zachry to kill the stranger he is guiding up the mountain.

In which category did the film Cloud Atlas earn a Golden Globe nomination, for work shared by one of its directors?

Best Original Score was the nomination, shared by Tom Tykwer and his two long-time musical partners. The trio wrote the music before the cameras had even started rolling.

Which Netflix series by the makers of the film Cloud Atlas did the novel's author help write, including its finale?

Sense8 took him on as a writer for its second season, and he co-wrote the last episode. He then co-scripted The Matrix Resurrections with one of the same directors.

In which Japanese city did the author of Cloud Atlas teach English for eight years before writing full time?

Hiroshima was his home from 1994, and his pupils were technical students. He has said he would probably have become a writer anywhere, but wondered whether he would have become the same one.

Which Russell Hoban novel, told in an imagined future dialect of English, influenced Zachry's story in Cloud Atlas?

Riddley Walker is narrated by a boy in a ruined Kent some two thousand years after a war destroyed civilization, in phonetic, punning English. Zachry's tale borrows the trick.

Which real English composer, whose amanuensis was Eric Fenby, inspired the character Vyvyan Ayrs in Cloud Atlas?

Frederick Delius and his young assistant were the models for Ayrs and Frobisher, the author said. In the novel the old man goes further, passing off the younger man's ideas as his own.

Which 1999 debut novel by the author of Cloud Atlas already featured Luisa Rey and Timothy Cavendish?

Ghostwritten gives Cavendish a small part in its London chapter and has Luisa Rey phone in to a late-night radio show. The author calls his interlinked books a single macronovel.