49 Fun Facts About While You Were Sleeping

Who plays Lucy, the lonely token collector at the heart of While You Were Sleeping?

Sandra Bullock believes the part came to her only because Demi Moore could not do it, and says she has been 'grateful to Demi Moore every single day' since.

Which actor plays Jack Callaghan, the brother Lucy actually falls for?

Bill Pullman wanted out after a first read-through at which, the producer recalled, nothing got a laugh; his agent ruled it out because he had only just quit another film.

Which actor plays the rich, gullible commuter Lucy rescues from the tracks?

Peter Gallagher's character sleeps through half the film, wakes to be told he is getting married, and decides that since his family love Lucy he 'might as well' love her too.

Which 1995 film followed While You Were Sleeping into cinemas?

Toy Story followed that November; While You Were Sleeping had opened on April 21 on fewer than 1,500 screens and still finished the weekend as the most popular film in America.

In which city is While You Were Sleeping set and shot?

Chicago, where Lucy and her ailing father had moved from Indiana to be near a research hospital; after he died she stayed on, taking fares for the city's elevated trains.

Which director, later behind the National Treasure films, made While You Were Sleeping?

Jon Turteltaub, the son of a sitcom writer best known for Sanford and Son, took on a script stitched together from rival drafts and, the producer recalled, polished it himself until it made sense.

In While You Were Sleeping, Lucy collects fares for which transit agency?

The CTA took Lucy on when her father fell ill and she had to quit school; a year after his death she is still in the booth, watching the same commuter pass every weekday morning.

On which holiday does Lucy pull Peter off the train tracks?

Christmas Day: Lucy is in the booth only because her boss talked her into the shift, arguing that she was the one employee with no family to spend the day with.

Which remark of Lucy's, overheard by a nurse, starts the whole mix-up?

'I was going to marry him' was a daydream said aloud, not a fact; the nurse repeats it to get Lucy past the family-only rule, and the Callaghans arrive to meet a bride-to-be.

Who overhears Lucy confessing the truth at the unconscious Peter's bedside?

Saul, the godfather, keeps her secret: since meeting her, he tells her, the family feel they have Peter back, and the truth would only take him away again.

Which actor, twice Oscar-nominated for Warren Beatty comedies, plays family friend Saul Tuttle?

Jack Warden was an army paratrooper who shattered a leg in a practice jump on the eve of D-Day; months in a hospital bed reading plays persuaded him to try acting.

Which actor plays Ox Callaghan, the wisecracking head of the family?

Peter Boyle's Ox scans the obituaries for trade, since the family firm buys up the contents of dead people's homes; it was Callaghan and Sons until Peter left for law school.

Which veteran actress plays Elsie, the grandmother, in While You Were Sleeping?

Glynis Johns plays Elsie, whose weak heart is the reason Lucy dares not confess: the family count three attacks, though Elsie insists they were only 'episodes'.

What is the name of Peter's actual girlfriend, who eventually turns up at the wedding?

Ashley turned his proposal down, changed her mind on a trip abroad and accepted by answering machine; she learns from his doorman that another woman already holds the title.

Caught in Peter's apartment by Jack, what does Lucy claim she is there to do?

Feed the cat, she says; Jack replies that Peter doesn't have one, and right on cue a cat strolls in, the pet of an on-off girlfriend his family never took to.

What does Jack want to do instead of taking over his father's business?

Build and sell his own furniture: he already has orders for six dining tables, and when he finally confesses, his father's only complaint is that he could have sold the firm sooner.

Because of a misunderstanding, what does Jack believe about Lucy?

That she is pregnant: his sister brings the rumour home after overhearing a sarcastic joke at Lucy's booth, and Jack then repeats it to her friends at a New Year's Eve party.

When Peter wakes and does not recognise Lucy, what does everyone assume?

He has amnesia, they decide, and a doctor even supplies a name for it, lacunar amnesia; told he has forgotten his own bride-to-be, Peter simply takes their word for it.

What gift does Jack bring Lucy after Peter proposes?

A snow globe of the city she dreams of visiting, spotted in a shop window on a delivery run; she then asks him for one reason not to marry Peter, and he says he has none.

What two words does Lucy blurt out at the altar?

Lucy's "I object" comes before the priest has even reached that part of the service, and Jack at once announces that he would have to object too.

Where does Jack place the engagement ring when he finally proposes?

In her token tray, the slot where commuters pay their fare: he proposes at her booth on her last day at work, with most of his family lined up behind him.

Which Italian city is Lucy's dream destination, where Jack takes her for their honeymoon?

Florence: Lucy carries a passport with no stamps in it, and her closing narration calls the honeymoon Jack's perfect gift, 'a stamp in my passport'.

What was the original title of the While You Were Sleeping screenplay?

Coma Guy survives as a line of dialogue: when Lucy hands her boss a wedding invitation with Peter's name on it, he asks, 'The coma guy? Are you insane?'

Whose company balked at an early version of While You Were Sleeping because its heroine was 'unconscious the whole time'?

Meg Ryan's company was pitched a version with the heroine as the patient; 'So we decided to flip it,' one of the writers recalled, and the sleeping part went to the man instead.

Which buddy-cop comedy did While You Were Sleeping knock off the top of the US box office?

Bad Boys had been No. 1 the weekend before; the romance opened with $9.3 million on some 700 fewer screens and relegated Will Smith and Martin Lawrence to second place.

While You Were Sleeping earned its leading lady a nomination for which major award?

A Golden Globe nomination, for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy: she lost to Nicole Kidman in To Die For, while MTV's voters shortlisted her token clerk as Most Desirable Female.

How well does Lucy know Peter before rescuing him?

They have never spoken: he buys a token at her booth every weekday morning, and on that alone she has built a whole future with the man she calls her Prince Charming.

How does Peter end up unconscious on the train tracks?

Muggers push him off the platform in a row over his coat; with an express train bearing down, Lucy jumps onto the tracks herself to get him clear.

Which everyday habit of Peter's does Lucy insist is heroic 'to the person' who benefits?

Giving up his train seat every day: 'that's not heroic,' Peter protests, and Lucy, who has watched him do it from her booth, answers that 'it is to the person who sits in it'.

Which American Film Institute list nominated While You Were Sleeping in 2002?

100 Years...100 Passions set out to rank America's greatest love stories; the film made the ballot of 400 nominees but not the final hundred, which Casablanca topped.

Counting her blessings to the unconscious Peter, Lucy lists an apartment and sole possession of what?

The remote control, which she calls 'very important'; what she has never had, she admits a moment later, is anybody she could laugh with.

Which 1994 action film made the leading lady of While You Were Sleeping a star?

Speed put her at the wheel of a bus rigged to explode if it slowed below 50 miles an hour, and its success led straight to her first romantic leads.

A year after While You Were Sleeping, the actor who plays Jack took which role in Independence Day?

The US President: his Thomas Whitmore is a former fighter pilot, so the head of state ends the film back in a cockpit, leading a squadron against the alien ships himself.

The actor who plays Ox later starred as Frank Barone in which sitcom?

Everybody Loves Raymond ran from 1996 to 2005, and its grumbling Frank Barone brought him seven Emmy nominations in seven years without a single win.

Which Disney classic featured the actress who plays Elsie as Winifred Banks?

Mary Poppins cast her as Mrs Banks, the children's suffragette mother, and the Sherman Brothers wrote the marching song 'Sister Suffragette' especially for her to sing.

Which teen drama later cast Monica Keena, who plays young sister Mary, as Abby Morgan?

Dawson's Creek hired her to play the troublemaker Abby Morgan as a first-season guest and kept bringing her back; the Callaghans' Mary had been her feature-film debut.

Which sports comedy had the director of While You Were Sleeping made two years earlier?

Cool Runnings, the Jamaican bobsled comedy, came out in 1993, and he kept the team together: its cinematographer and its editor both followed him to the romance.

Jack tells Peter that Lucy drives you so nuts you don't know whether to hug her or do what?

Arm wrestle her, he says, adding that she would cross to Europe just for a stamp in her passport; Peter, the one engaged to her, replies, 'No, that's not it.'

The actor who plays the man Lucy rescues later starred as Sandy Cohen in which series?

The O.C. cast him as Sandy Cohen, the public defender whose decision to bring a troubled teenager home to Newport Beach sets the whole series going.

Elsie announces, 'I don't drink anymore,' and then adds what?

'I don't drink any less, either' is the punchline; her home-made eggnog comes with its own warning, given to Lucy at the door: 'Word to the wise: drink soda.'

Lucy's persistent admirer Joe Fusco Jr. is the son of which figure in her life?

Her landlord: Joe Jr. reminds her that his father has a set of keys, offers to get her rent cut if he moves in, and is once caught in her closet trying on her shoes.

Lucy's boss Jerry warns her that you are born into a family and 'do not join them like you do' what?

The Marines: Jerry is the first person she confides in, and when she begs him to tell her what to do about falling for the unconscious man's brother, his advice is 'Pull the plug.'

Alone with his unconscious brother, how does Jack jokingly propose to decide which of them gets Lucy?

Cutting cards: 'High card gets Lucy,' he says, having just admitted that for the first time in his life he envies something Peter has; then he asks for best of three.

Which Yiddish insult does Peter's godfather throw at him in While You Were Sleeping?

Putz: 'I couldn't love you any more if you were my own son,' his godfather tells him, 'but the fact of the matter is, you're a putz,' and he is ordered to take a proper look at Lucy.

Which animals did the young Peter famously 'rescue', having first knocked them out of their nest with a rock?

Squirrels: the family still display a photograph of their little hero with the three he saved, and only after his accident does Peter confess to Jack how they came to need saving.

What is the surname of Lucy, the heroine of While You Were Sleeping?

Moderatz: 'Lucy Eleanor Moderatz,' she tells the unconscious Peter when she introduces herself in the middle of the night, adding that his family thinks the two of them are engaged.

When a woman bursts into Lucy and Peter's wedding insisting she is engaged to him, who arrives to contradict her?

Her own husband: she had turned Peter down, flown home to accept him after all and never mentioned being married, which leaves the family asking, 'You proposed to a married woman?'

At the altar Lucy tells Ox, 'I am in love with your son', and he says, 'I know'; what does she add?

'Not that one' is her answer, meaning the groom's brother; she then tells the whole family that the truth is she fell in love with all of them.

Which critic was 'a little astonished' how much he enjoyed While You Were Sleeping?

Roger Ebert gave it three stars: its dialogue, he wrote, doesn't crackle like that of Four Weddings and a Funeral, 'but the movie works all the same'.