50 Fun Facts About Selma (2014 Film)

The actors playing King, his wife, the president and the governor in Selma share which nationality?

British actors took all four parts. The lead had been attached since 2010, under an earlier director, four years before the cameras rolled.

Selma could not quote Martin Luther King Jr.'s real speeches because his estate licensed them to which filmmaker?

Steven Spielberg was to produce a King film for DreamWorks and Warner Bros., so Selma's director wrote new speeches that echo the originals, copying King's habit of saying a thing three ways.

Which talk-show host produced Selma and also plays Annie Lee Cooper, who punches a sheriff?

Oprah Winfrey said she took the part because of Cooper's courage. The real Cooper had stood for hours at the courthouse trying to register before she struck the sheriff.

Which song from Selma won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song?

Glory beat songs from The Lego Movie and Begin Again to the Oscar, then added a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

Which director of Selma became the first Black woman nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Director?

Ava DuVernay took over the stalled project in 2013 and, by her own estimate, rewrote 90 percent of the script, yet a clause in the first writer's contract kept her name off the credit.

In Selma, state troopers attack marchers with clubs and tear gas on a bridge named for which man?

Edmund Pettus was a Confederate general who went on to lead the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and campaigns to rename the bridge have followed.

Which singer-pianist co-wrote and performs Selma's Oscar-winning theme song with one of the film's own actors?

John Legend appears on the Oscar under his birth name, John Stephens, having written the song with the rapper who plays James Bevel in the film.

In Selma, what does Martin Luther King Jr. do when troopers step aside on the second march?

Prays, then turns back: the real King did the same on March 9, 1965, obeying a federal court order, and the day became known as Turnaround Tuesday.

The Oscar-winning song from Selma links the 1965 marches to 2014 protests in which American city?

Ferguson, Missouri, saw protests from August 2014 after a police officer shot a Black teenager, and the song arrived that December as a protest anthem.

Selma won the Oscar for its theme song but was nominated in only which other category?

Best Picture was its only other nomination. Its director and its star were both passed over, though each had been nominated at the Golden Globes.

Which actor plays Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, a role he first landed under another director in 2010?

David Oyelowo stayed with the project through four years of delays, and he had already worked with its eventual director on her 2012 film Middle of Nowhere.

Which actor plays President Lyndon B. Johnson, who first tells King his bill must wait, in Selma?

Tom Wilkinson's reluctant president drew the film's loudest criticism: a former Johnson aide said the real president had been King's willing partner on the bill.

Which actor, who holds up a diner in Pulp Fiction, plays Alabama governor George Wallace in Selma?

Tim Roth's Wallace decides, with trooper chief Al Lingo, to meet a night march in Marion with force, the decision that leads to the film's first killing of a protester.

Which actress plays Coretta Scott King in Selma, having already played her in the 2001 film Boycott?

Carmen Ejogo met the real Coretta while preparing for Boycott and was given her blessing, thirteen years before playing her a second time.

Which rapper plays activist James Bevel in Selma and co-wrote the film's Oscar-winning song?

Common shared the Oscar for the song, and the man he plays was the strategist who set the marches to Montgomery in motion after a young protester was killed.

Which future Succession star plays James Reeb, the Boston minister killed after the second march, in Selma?

Jeremy Strong was four years from his breakthrough as Kendall Roy when he played Reeb, a white Unitarian minister fatally beaten by white men with clubs in the town.

Which actress, later a hero in Marvel films, plays organizer Diane Nash in Selma?

Tessa Thompson went on to play Valkyrie in the Thor films. The real Diane Nash was married to James Bevel during the events the film shows.

Which Oscar-winning actor plays Fred Gray, the lawyer who asks a federal judge to allow the march, in Selma?

Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the attorney who, a decade earlier, had defended Rosa Parks; in the film his plea to Judge Frank Johnson clears the way for the final march.

In Selma, which official played by Dylan Baker tells President Johnson that King is a problem?

J. Edgar Hoover goes on to suggest breaking up King's marriage. The FBI's wiretaps on King had been approved by Robert Kennedy before Johnson took office.

In Selma, which leader visits Coretta Scott King and offers to help by seeming the more extreme alternative?

Malcolm X really did speak in the town on February 4, 1965, telling Coretta he meant to show white America the alternative, and he was assassinated later that month.

Selma opens in 1964 with Martin Luther King Jr. accepting which honor, months before the marches begin?

Nobel Peace Prize in hand, the film's King is soon at the White House asking for a federal law that would let Black citizens register without obstruction.

Early in Selma, four girls are killed by a Klan bomb at a church in which Southern city?

Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in September 1963, more than a year before the film's main story begins.

In Selma, Annie Lee Cooper knocks which lawman to the ground during a confrontation at the courthouse?

Jim Clark was the Dallas County sheriff, and the real Cooper is said to have hit him after he jabbed her with his club as she waited in line to register.

In Selma, which gospel singer does Martin Luther King Jr. telephone so that she can sing to him?

Mahalia Jackson is played by the R&B singer Ledisi, who returned to the part in a 2022 biopic about the gospel star's life.

The first march in Selma, where troopers beat marchers in front of TV cameras, is remembered by which name?

Bloody Sunday was March 7, 1965, and the televised beatings backfired on the state: hundreds of outsiders answered the call to come to the town for a second march.

Selma ends with Martin Luther King Jr. addressing the marchers from the steps of which Montgomery building?

Alabama State Capitol steps were the march's goal, and the real King spoke there on March 25, 1965, to a crowd of about 25,000 people.

In Selma, President Johnson tells King that his bill must wait because which priority comes first?

The War on Poverty is what the film's Johnson calls his next project; he says he understands King's concerns but asks him to wait.

Which Detroit mother, seen joining the marchers in Selma, was shot dead by Klansmen after the final march?

Viola Liuzzo was shot while driving activists between the two cities on the night the march ended, and one of the four men in the Klan car was an FBI informant.

In Selma, activists from which group, at work in the town before King arrived, resent his organization's methods?

SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had run a voter registration drive in the town since 1963, well before King's group was invited in.

The real 1965 speech to Congress shown near the end of Selma is remembered for echoing which anthem's title?

We Shall Overcome was the movement's own song, so a Southern president taking up its words before Congress, eight days after the bridge attack, was heard as an embrace of the cause.

Which director was first attached to Selma but chose to make The Butler instead?

Lee Daniels said the money for the film was in place in 2010 but he had to pick one project; the star he had cast as King stayed on for his successor.

Which screenwriter holds the sole writing credit on Selma, even though its director rewrote most of the script?

Paul Webb wrote the original story back in 2008, centred on King and Johnson, and his contract guaranteed him sole credit whatever happened to the script later.

Which Hollywood star's company Plan B, also behind 12 Years a Slave, co-produced Selma?

Brad Pitt's Plan B was attached from the first announcement in 2008, and it stayed through a change of director and six years of waiting before filming began.

Which jazz musician made his film-scoring debut by composing the music for Selma?

Jason Moran, a pianist, had never scored a feature before, and he worked with the same director again on her documentary 13th.

Most of Selma was filmed around which Southern city, standing in for Alabama in 1965?

Atlanta and nearby Georgia towns doubled for most locations, but the attack on the marchers was shot in the real town, on the real bridge.

Which film, presented as one continuous take, won the top prize at the Oscars where Selma's song was honored?

Birdman won four Oscars that night, while Selma went home with one for its song.

Which hashtag did April Reign create in January 2015, the day Selma's lead and director missed out on nominations?

#OscarsSoWhite was posted the day the nominations came out, with all 20 acting slots going to white performers, and it returned when the same thing happened a year later.

Before directing Selma, its director spent years in Hollywood working in which profession?

Publicist was her first film job: she ran her own agency promoting other people's movies and reportedly did not pick up a camera until she was 32.

Selma opened in a handful of American cinemas on which holiday in 2014, before going nationwide in January?

Christmas Day brought only a limited opening in a few big cities; the wide release on January 9 came two months before the 50th anniversary of the march.

Which future congressman, played by Stephan James, helps lead the first march across the bridge in Selma?

John Lewis had his skull fractured on the bridge that day; he was elected to Congress from Georgia in 1986 and served 17 terms.

Which landmark law, signed in August 1965, grew directly out of the campaign dramatized in Selma?

Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed on August 6, under five months after the bridge attack, and it outlawed the literacy tests used to keep Black citizens off the rolls.

In Selma, which young protester played by LaKeith Stanfield is shot by a state trooper inside a café?

Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old church deacon, was trying to shield his mother from troopers; his death eight days later is what inspired the march to Montgomery.

André Holland plays which aide to Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, a future ambassador to the United Nations?

Andrew Young later said the film got everything right except the president: as he remembered it, King and Johnson always treated each other with respect.

Colman Domingo plays which King ally in Selma, the man who led the SCLC after the 1968 assassination?

Ralph Abernathy had been at King's side since the Montgomery bus boycott, and after 1968 he carried through the Poor People's Campaign in Washington.

Which veteran actor appears uncredited in Selma as Frank Johnson, the federal judge who lets the march proceed?

Martin Sheen plays a judge whose real counterpart first issued a restraining order against marching, then ruled after hearings that the walk to Montgomery could go ahead.

Lorraine Toussaint plays which Selma organizer, the first Black woman in Alabama to run for Congress?

Amelia Boynton was beaten unconscious on the bridge, and a photograph of her lying in the road ran on front pages around the world.

In Selma, wounded marchers are carried back to which church, the movement's headquarters in the town?

Brown Chapel AME was where the marches set out from, and the street it stands on now carries Martin Luther King Jr.'s name.

In 1965, ABC cut into its broadcast of which film to show footage of the bridge attack dramatized in Selma?

Judgment at Nuremberg was having its network premiere, and the jump from a film about Nazi atrocities to beatings in Alabama won the marchers wide sympathy.

Critics said Selma left out which rabbi, who marched in the front row with Martin Luther King Jr.?

Abraham Heschel walked in the front row on the way to Montgomery, and a famous news photograph shows the white-bearded rabbi in line with King and the diplomat Ralph Bunche.

Which star of The Wire plays Hosea Williams, who walks at the head of the first march, in Selma?

Wendell Pierce, The Wire's Bunk Moreland, plays the SCLC organizer who set off at the front of up to 600 marchers on the highway out of town.