25 Things You Didn’t Know About Interview With The Vampire

Spending years in development hell, it seemed as though Interview With The Vampire was destined never to get the green light. Even when it did, there were serious questions as to whether the overwrought prose of Anne Rice’s celebrated paean to loss and guilt would translate to the cinema screen.

In the end, Neil Jordan’s film was a captivating, outrageous and utterly faithful waltz into an eighteenth century world of arch, rather pretentious immortals with perfect hair and cheekbones that could cut glass. After all, if Bram Stoker is largely responsible for creating the modern day idea of the vampire, it was Anne Rice that made ‘em sexy.

Twenty-five years on, Interview With The Vampire hasn’t dated, thanks to an opulent production design and fantastic practical effects from the late, legendary Stan Winston’s studio. So let’s sink our teeth into twenty-five things you (probably) didn’t know about the movie.

All of the actors playing vampires - which, in fairness, comprised most of the cast - were required to hang upside down for half an hour at a time during make-up, causing a rush of blood to their heads that would make the blood vessels in their faces stand out.

The make-up artists would then frantically trace the popped-out veins to create the appropriate 'nosferatuan' complexion: but the effect would fade so quickly that before you knew it, they’d be turning them back upside down again.

This explains why, for a movie with little in the way of prosthetics, Neil Jordan had to have his cast in make-up for three-and-a-half hours a day.