50 Fun Facts About Les Misérables (2012 Film)

The barricade battle in the 2012 film Les Misérables is based on which real Paris uprising?

The June Rebellion of 1832 was a two-day republican rising put down by the army, more than forty years after the French Revolution that many viewers assume the film shows.

How were the songs in the 2012 film Les Misérables recorded, unlike most movie musicals?

Sung live on set, the vocals followed a piano played through earpieces, and a 70-piece orchestra was recorded only after filming had finished.

Which actress had her real hair cut off on camera to play Fantine in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Anne Hathaway first fell for the stage at eight, watching her own mother play Fantine in the first US national tour of the musical.

Which pop star was reported in January 2012 to have been offered a role in the film Les Misérables?

Taylor Swift later said the reports were not entirely accurate, and the part of the innkeepers' daughter went to a West End actress who had already played it on stage.

For the 2012 film Les Misérables, crews built a replica of which Bastille monument in Greenwich?

A giant elephant really stood at the Bastille: Napoleon wanted it cast in bronze, but only a full-size plaster model was ever built.

On which holiday did the 2012 film Les Misérables open in the US, moved to avoid The Hobbit?

Christmas Day brought an $18.1 million opening, then a record first day for a musical, even with Django Unchained arriving in cinemas on the same date.

Which star gave up a part in Django Unchained to play Thénardier in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Sacha Baron Cohen had to abandon his Django Unchained commitment to play the swindling innkeeper, then saw both movies open in US cinemas on the very same date.

Which prisoner number is Jean Valjean in the stage show and its 2012 film Les Misérables?

24601 is what Javert keeps calling him, and it was the novelist's private code: he believed he had been conceived on a date he wrote as 24-6-01.

Which Best Picture winner beat the 2012 film Les Misérables despite its director not being nominated?

Argo was the first Best Picture winner since Driving Miss Daisy whose director missed a nomination; the musical left the same ceremony with three Oscars.

Which Sesame Street character starred as Jean Bom-Bom in a 2014 parody of the film Les Misérables?

Cookie Monster's sketch was called Les Mousserables, and it borrowed the film's own costume and set designs for its puppets.

Colm Wilkinson, the stage's original Jean Valjean, plays which character in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

The Bishop of Digne forgives Valjean for taking his silver, and the film brings him back in the final scene to welcome the dying hero.

Which office does Jean Valjean hold as a factory owner in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Mayor of a northern town is his respectable new identity, until Javert arrives as its chief of police and starts to suspect who he really is.

Why is Fantine dismissed from her factory job in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

She has a secret child, Cosette, boarded with innkeepers who keep demanding money; once the wages stop she sells her hair and then her teeth.

How does Javert die in the 2012 film Les Misérables after allowing Jean Valjean to escape?

Javert jumps into the Seine after choosing compassion over the law, a contradiction his rigid sense of duty cannot survive.

How does Jean Valjean carry the wounded Marius from the barricade in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Through the sewers is the only way out, and Javert is waiting at the exit; seeing how near Marius is to death, he steps aside.

Which street urchin unmasks Javert as a police spy at the barricade in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Gavroche was played by a boy who had already spent a year in the same role on the London stage before the cameras rolled.

Which character takes a bullet for Marius at the barricade in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Éponine dies in his arms after handing over the letter from Cosette that she had kept back from him.

What does Jean Valjean do when the rebels let him execute Javert in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Releases him unharmed, while letting the students believe the shot was fatal; the inspector cannot make sense of being spared.

Which celebration do the Thénardiers gatecrash to blackmail Marius in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

A wedding reception, for Marius and Cosette, where the blackmail backfires by revealing that Valjean was the stranger who saved the groom's life.

Which actor earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination as Jean Valjean in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Hugh Jackman had asked the director for the part before production even began, then trained a voice he classed as baritone up into the tenor range.

Which actor played Inspector Javert in the 2012 film Les Misérables, drawing criticism for his singing?

Russell Crowe prepared by visiting the novelist's Paris home, where the curator told him about Vidocq, a real convict who became a detective.

Which actor played Marius in the 2012 film Les Misérables, a year after My Week with Marilyn?

Eddie Redmayne talked the director into letting his big lament for dead comrades begin with no accompaniment at all, to bring out the guilt.

Which actress played the adult Cosette in the 2012 film Les Misérables after an open casting call?

Amanda Seyfried's casting was confirmed by a co-star, who mentioned it in an interview in January 2012, days after reports that she had been offered the part.

Who played Madame Thénardier in the 2012 film Les Misérables after playing a queen for its director?

Helena Bonham Carter had already shared a film musical with the actor playing her husband: both appeared in Sweeney Todd in 2007.

Who played the Thénardiers' daughter in the 2012 film Les Misérables after playing her in the West End?

Samantha Barks got the news in public: the film's producer walked on during her curtain call in a touring musical and announced it to the audience.

Which director made the 2012 film Les Misérables as his follow-up to the Oscar-winning The King's Speech?

Tom Hooper turned down the chance to direct Iron Man 3 so that he could make the musical instead.

Which French author wrote the 1862 novel that inspired the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Victor Hugo heard the gunfire of the 1832 uprising himself while writing in a Paris garden, and sheltered between columns as barricades went up around him.

Which producer of the original London stage show also produced the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Cameron Mackintosh announced in 1992 that TriStar Pictures would co-produce a screen version, but that project was abandoned and the film took two more decades to arrive.

Aaron Tveit auditioned for Marius but was cast as which student leader in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Enjolras suited him better, he decided after reading the novel, even though he had never performed any part in the musical before.

Which Fantine ballad from the 2012 film Les Misérables led the teaser trailer?

I Dreamed a Dream drew comparisons with Jennifer Hudson's showstopper in Dreamgirls, and one review predicted the scene would almost certainly win its singer an Oscar.

Which song was written for the 2012 film Les Misérables and earned an Oscar nomination?

Suddenly fills a gap the director noticed when he read the novel: the moment Valjean, having taken Cosette from the inn, grasps what fatherhood will ask of him.

Which song from the 2012 film Les Misérables was censored online during Shanghai's 2022 lockdown?

Do You Hear the People Sing? circulated on social media as a protest against the restrictions until the Chinese government blocked the clip.

Which comic song do the Thénardiers perform at their inn in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Master of the House is one of the few comic numbers in the score, introducing the couple and the corrupt way they run their business.

Which Thénardier solo from the stage show is left out of the 2012 film Les Misérables entirely?

Dog Eats Dog, the innkeeper's solo in the sewers on stage, was dropped from the film, while almost every other number from the show survives, though many were trimmed.

Besides acting and makeup prizes, the 2012 film Les Misérables won an Oscar in which other category?

Best Sound Mixing was one of three wins from eight nominations; the costumes, the sets and the newly written song all went home empty-handed.

The director of the 2012 film Les Misérables later filmed which other long-running stage show?

Cats followed in 2019 and lost money, taking $78.4 million worldwide against a production budget of at least $80 million.

Which Shadowlands writer drafted the screenplay for the 2012 film Les Misérables in about six weeks?

William Nicholson shares the screenplay credit with the stage show's own writers, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Herbert Kretzmer.

Which film held the opening-day record among movie musicals until the 2012 film Les Misérables broke it?

High School Musical 3 had set the mark with $17 million in 2008, until a 19th-century French tragedy outdrew Disney's teenagers on its first day.

Which later film of a stage show took the worldwide opening record from the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Wicked opened to $162.9 million worldwide in 2024, ending a record for screen versions of stage musicals that the French epic had held for nearly twelve years.

The death of which champion of the poor triggers the uprising in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

General Lamarque was a real hero of the Napoleonic wars, and the riots that followed his funeral in 1832 grew into the fighting the film depicts.

Marius belongs to which society of student revolutionaries in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Friends of the ABC is a French pun: said aloud, the three letters resemble the word for the abased, the downtrodden poor the students want to raise up.

Late reshoots for the 2012 film Les Misérables were staged at Pulteney Weir in which English city?

Bath stood in for Paris four months after filming wrapped, because an error was found in the stunt footage of the inspector's last scene.

Which British studio complex housed the soundstage sets for the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Pinewood Studios provided the soundstages, while location work ranged from a naval base in Portsmouth to the village of Gourdon in the south of France.

In the 2012 film Les Misérables, Javert grows suspicious when Valjean lifts what off a trapped man?

A cart had pinned a worker named Fauchelevent, who later returns the favour by helping Valjean and Cosette get away.

To which country does Valjean plan to flee with Cosette in the 2012 film Les Misérables?

England is his planned refuge once he fears Javert is close, but Cosette, newly in love, is reluctant to go and leaves a letter behind for Marius.

A 2013 Tumblr blog paired stills from the film Les Misérables with lines from which teen comedy?

Mean Girls supplied the captions for the blog, titled Les Mean Girls, which set a 2004 comedy's put-downs against 19th-century misery.

Which sketch duo spoofed the 2012 film Les Misérables with a Javert who cannot get a word in?

Key & Peele shot their parody in a copy of the film's own visual style, with the inspector struggling to be heard over everyone else's overlapping parts.

Which production company of Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner financed the 2012 film Les Misérables?

Working Title Films scored what was then the biggest UK opening weekend in the company's history with the film, which took £8.1 million there.

The 2012 film Les Misérables held its world premiere in which London square, with the red carpet streamed online?

Leicester Square staged the premiere on 5 December 2012, and the red-carpet stream was presented by Michael Ball, the West End's first Marius.

Which actor beat the lead of the 2012 film Les Misérables to the Best Actor Oscar that season?

Daniel Day-Lewis won for playing Abraham Lincoln and became the first three-time winner of the Best Actor Oscar.