10 Things You Didn't Know About Cape Fear
7. Illeana Douglas Took Inspiration From A Real Murder
Illeana Douglas, the woman who plays of of Cady's victims and Sam's work colleague Lori, apparently took inspiration from 'The Preppy Killer' and his real life 18-year-old victim Jennifer Levin, who was found strangled in Central Park after a stranger in a bar attacked her on their walk home.
Channeling the girl's naivety and the parallels to the terrible situation that happened to her, Douglas recalled the 'profound effect' that hearing about the death had on her in 1986: bringing a certain believability and rawness to the role in reflection of Levin's experience.
Douglas's scene where she utilised these emotions was a gruelling task, thrashing around for up to 17 hours at a time whilst handcuffed by De Niro. Exhausting herself physically as well as mentally, it took a solid two days of filming to get her hysteria exactly right: but resulted in a compliment from De Niro himself for not being a p*ssy in her metal restraints. Well, that's something, I guess.