50 Fun Facts About Erin Brockovich

The real Erin Brockovich makes a brief cameo in the Julia Roberts film playing which kind of worker?

A waitress named Julia is the part she plays in a diner scene, while the real Ed Masry sits in the booth behind her.

In a famous Erin Brockovich scene, a lawyer for the utility suddenly will not touch which item?

Her glass of water came from Hinkley's wells, Erin tells her, and the moment was based on something that really happened, though during a trial.

Which California utility do Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry take on over poisoned groundwater in Hinkley?

Pacific Gas and Electric settled the real case in 1996, and the lawsuit also required it to stop using the chemical and clean up the groundwater.

The Hinkley case in Erin Brockovich ends with the utility paying a record settlement of what size?

$333 million was the largest settlement in a direct-action lawsuit in US history at the time, and the film ends with Ed Masry handing Erin a bonus far bigger than she expected.

Erin Brockovich first hires lawyer Ed Masry to win her damages after which mishap?

A car crash with a doctor leaves Erin injured, and her temper under cross-examination loses the case, so she turns up at Ed's office demanding a job.

Which cancer-linked chemical does Erin Brockovich find in the groundwater of Hinkley, California?

Hexavalent chromium is the dangerous form of the metal, and in the film the utility has been assuring residents that it uses a safer kind.

Erin Brockovich earned five Oscar nominations but won only one, in which category?

Best Actress went to Julia Roberts, who also took the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards for the same performance.

Erin Brockovich made Julia Roberts the first female star paid which sum for a single film?

$20 million was a first for a woman on screen, and the gamble paid off when the film took $256.3 million at cinemas worldwide.

A producer first heard Erin Brockovich's story because the two women shared which kind of practitioner?

Chiropractor Pamela DuMond told patient Carla Santos Shamberg that another client had a story worth filming, and Shamberg invited Erin over to hear it.

Which British actor earned an Oscar nomination as lawyer Ed Masry in Erin Brockovich?

Albert Finney won the Screen Actors Guild award for the role, his fifth Oscar nomination in a run that began with Tom Jones in 1963.

Which director made Erin Brockovich and earned two Best Director Oscar nominations in the same year?

Steven Soderbergh was only the second person nominated twice for directing in one year, and he took the film on after three big-name directors had passed.

Julia Roberts and her Erin Brockovich director reunited a year later for which Las Vegas heist film?

Ocean's Eleven put her in an ensemble with George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, and it became the fifth highest-grossing film of 2001.

Hinkley, the small California town at the center of Erin Brockovich, lies in which desert?

Mojave desert surrounds Hinkley, an unincorporated community near Barstow that had one school and a general store when the dumping took place.

Which actor plays George, the ponytailed biker who moves in next door to Erin Brockovich?

Aaron Eckhart first gained wide exposure as George, and six years later earned a Golden Globe nomination for Thank You for Smoking.

The real Erin Brockovich's second book, released in 2020, warns that which superhero is not coming?

Superman is the figure in the title, Superman's Not Coming, which followed her 2001 book Take It from Me: Life's a Struggle But You Can Win.

After losing her case, Erin Brockovich talks her way into which job at Ed Masry's law firm?

File clerk is the lowly post she starts in, and it is while filing that she comes across the Hinkley paperwork that sets the whole case in motion.

Erin Brockovich was nominated for Best Picture at the 2001 Oscars but lost to which Russell Crowe film?

Gladiator won five Oscars that night, and became the first Best Picture winner since 1949 to take neither the directing nor a screenwriting award.

By 2016, The New York Times said Hinkley, made famous by Erin Brockovich, had slowly become what?

A ghost town is what it had turned into: the plume of tainted groundwater kept spreading for years after the settlement, reaching six miles long by 2013.

Studio executives worried that which habit of the film's Erin Brockovich would put audiences off?

Profanity from the title character worried executives even though the film had played well with test audiences.

Which beauty-queen title does the film Erin Brockovich give Erin in place of the one she really held?

Miss Wichita was a deliberate change by the director, who liked the idea of Erin having been a beauty queen in the region she came from.

Which actor co-founded Jersey Films and was one of the Oscar-nominated producers of Erin Brockovich?

Danny DeVito set up Jersey Films with Michael Shamberg in 1991, and Shamberg's wife Carla was the producer who first brought Erin's story to the company.

Before Erin Brockovich, Julia Roberts had Oscar nominations for Pretty Woman and which earlier film?

Steel Magnolias brought her first nomination, for playing a young newlywed with diabetes opposite Sally Field and Dolly Parton.

Conchata Ferrell, secretary Brenda in Erin Brockovich, later played housekeeper Berta on which sitcom?

Two and a Half Men kept her on screen for 212 episodes from 2003 to 2015 and earned her two Emmy nominations.

The real Erin Brockovich pieced together the Hinkley case despite having which learning difficulty?

Dyslexia did not stop her, and she has called the long hours of reading that the investigation demanded the best education she ever had.

The real Erin Brockovich recorded a voice cameo that was cut from which 2007 animated film?

The Simpsons Movie left hours of finished material on the cutting-room floor, including her cameo and one by Isla Fisher, both voicing consultants.

Erin Brockovich first grows suspicious on finding medical records among the papers for which kind of case?

Real estate was the matter in hand: the utility wanted to buy Pete and Donna Jensen's home, and Donna had simply kept all of its letters together.

The director of Erin Brockovich beat his own nomination by winning the Oscar for which other film?

Traffic won him Best Director over himself, and its four Oscars on the night outdid the single award that went to Erin Brockovich.

Which famous critic gave Erin Brockovich only two stars, saying it lacked focus and energy?

Roger Ebert was a rare dissenter, since most reviews were warm and audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an A.

Which future CSI star plays Donna Jensen, the first Hinkley resident Erin Brockovich visits?

Marg Helgenberger's Donna is a composite of real Hinkley residents, and the film came out the year she began her long run as Catherine Willows.

In Erin Brockovich, the old memo Charles Embry hands over proves that who knew about the contamination?

Corporate headquarters knew by 1966 and told the Hinkley plant to keep it secret, which is the link Ed and Erin needed to win a far larger payout.

Where does Erin Brockovich charm a young attendant into letting her search through Hinkley's records?

The water board archive is where she finds the evidence, and the real Erin says her looks may have helped but denies setting out to use them.

The Hinkley plant in Erin Brockovich added its toxic chemical to cooling towers to prevent what?

Rust was the enemy at the compressor station, and the additive was cheap and efficient, so the plant used it in its cooling water from 1952 to 1966.

The Erin Brockovich utility later pleaded guilty to manslaughter over which 2018 California wildfire?

Camp Fire investigators blamed the company's equipment for the 2018 blaze, and in 2020 it pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.

In 2023 the real Erin Brockovich went to which Ohio town after a toxic train derailment?

East Palestine residents began calling her within hours of the Norfolk Southern derailment, and a few weeks later she spoke at a town hall meeting there.

Which 2021 ABC drama starring Katey Sagal was inspired by the life of Erin Brockovich?

Rebel was created by Krista Vernoff, with Sagal as Annie "Rebel" Bello, and ABC cancelled it after a single season.

The American Film Institute ranked Erin Brockovich at number 31 on its 2003 list of screen what?

Heroes made up fifty of the hundred characters on the list, and the film itself later placed 73rd in the institute's ranking of America's most inspiring movies.

Which screenwriter spent a year shadowing Erin Brockovich and earned an Oscar nomination for the script?

Susannah Grant had told the producers she wanted to write about a tough, outspoken woman, and she built the script around Erin's bond with Ed rather than the courtroom.

Erin Brockovich's producers picked their director after his work on which 1998 George Clooney crime film?

Out of Sight had shown the producers how well he directed women, with Jennifer Lopez's role in it held up as the proof.

To avoid years of appeals, the lawyers in Erin Brockovich settle the Hinkley claims through which process?

Binding arbitration needed a large majority of the plaintiffs to agree, so Ed and Erin go back to Hinkley and win over all 634 of them.

In the Hinkley case behind Erin Brockovich, tainted wastewater seeped into wells after being dumped where?

Unlined ponds let about 370 million gallons of tainted wastewater soak into the ground between 1952 and 1966, and regulators were not told until 1987.

Which actor, the mysterious scientist Keys in E.T., plays big-firm lawyer Kurt Potter in Erin Brockovich?

Peter Coyote's Kurt Potter merges the two big-city lawyers who really joined the fight, and both men said they loved his portrayal.

Which studio released Erin Brockovich in American cinemas while Columbia TriStar handled it overseas?

Universal and Sony agreed to split the costs and the profits, repeating a deal the two studios had struck for The Bone Collector.

Erin Brockovich had Julia Roberts's second-best opening weekend yet, behind which 1999 romantic comedy?

Runaway Bride kept that record, but Erin Brockovich still opened at number one with $28.1 million and held the top spot for three weeks.

Besides Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry, which real figure from the Hinkley case appears in the film?

The presiding judge, LeRoy A. Simmons, appears as himself, having officiated at the original hearing in Barstow.

Which composer of The Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty wrote the score for Erin Brockovich?

Thomas Newman scored it in a run that also took in The Green Mile and Pay It Forward, and he worked with the same director again on The Good German.

Which true episode was filmed for Erin Brockovich but cut so viewers would not expect a tragic ending?

A spell in hospital really did follow when the toxins made the real Erin sick, but the director feared viewers would expect a terminal-illness film.

The real Ed Masry of Erin Brockovich later served as mayor of which Southern California city?

Thousand Oaks had him as a councilman and mayor, and he resigned his seat only a week before he died in 2005.

Erin Brockovich's Kurt Potter was partly based on which lawyer later seen on a Real Housewives series?

Tom Girardi and another Los Angeles attorney brought their firms in when Ed Masry was nearly out of money, and the film folded the two men into one character.

Erin Brockovich editor Anne V. Coates won her Oscar decades earlier for cutting which David Lean epic?

Lawrence of Arabia won her the editing Oscar, and she was still cutting major films nearly forty years later, including two for the same director.

Erin Brockovich was its director's first film in which the female lead does what from start to finish?

Julia Roberts is in every scene, a challenge the director had never taken on before and one of the things that drew him to the project.