Apollo 13 was released in 1995 and told the true story of the ill-fated 1970 lunar mission that gripped the world. Directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris, the film turned a story everyone already knew the ending to into one of the most nail-biting experiences in 90s cinema. Behind the cameras, there were casting near-misses, groundbreaking zero-gravity filming, painstaking recreations of NASA hardware, and a director determined to get every last detail right. We’re telling that behind the scenes story now with 45 huge facts about Apollo 13. You can hear us discuss the film on the All The Right Movies podcast, available now on Spotify, YouTube, and on the ATRM website.

1. A previous attempt to tell the story didn’t go well

Apollo 13 wasn’t the first time Hollywood tried to dramatise the mission. Back in 1974, ABC made a TV movie called Houston, We’ve Got a Problem, starring Robert Culp and Sandra Dee. Rather unusually, the film focused entirely on mission control and didn’t feature the three astronauts at all, which seems like a pretty bold creative decision for a story about men stranded in space. It wasn’t well received, and the real astronaut commanding the mission – Jim Lovell – called it “fictitious and in poor taste,” adding that it was “a disservice to the flight crew and ground personnel.”

2. The book that inspired the film was turned down three times

In 1991, Jeffrey Kluger, a writer at science magazine Discover, had the idea of writing a book about the Apollo 13 mission. He wrote to Jim Lovell asking for an interview, but Lovell had bigger plans. Rather than just being interviewed, he wanted to collaborate on writing the whole thing. The result was Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, a non-fiction book published in 1994. Getting it off the ground wasn’t easy, though. Kluger said the first three literary agents he pitched the idea to all told him the same thing: “Nobody will want to read about three men who didn’t land on the moon.” That sentiment is echoed by a line in the finished film, when Jim’s wife, Marilyn, says about the press: “Landing on the moon wasn’t dramatic enough for them, why should not landing on it be?”

3. A family connection helped get the film made

Kluger knew what he had, and started sending his manuscript around Hollywood studios as soon as he’d finished the first chapter. A bidding war broke out, and it was won by Imagine Entertainment, the production company owned by Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer, who secured the rights for over $500,000. The connection came through Jerry Bostick, a NASA flight controller on the real Apollo missions. Bostick’s son, Michael, was a Vice President at Imagine Entertainment, and it was Michael who flagged the book to Howard and Grazer and told them they should make the film.

4. Jim Lovell had a different Jim Lovell in mind

John Travolta was apparently considered for the lead role of Jim Lovell, and the real Lovell initially wanted Kevin Costner to play him, thinking they looked alike. Jeffrey Kluger later recalled going for dinner with Tom Hanks early in the process and breaking the news that Lovell had been keen on Costner. Hanks took it in his stride, replying: “Geez, he’s gonna be really disappointed with me then. Maybe there’s something I can do with my hair.”

5. The leading man had a personal reason for saying yes

After working together on hit romantic comedy Splash (1984), Tom Hanks was always the person Ron Howard wanted for the role, and he sent Hanks the script as soon as it was ready. When Hanks called him back, he explained that there were four roles he’d always wanted to play: a baseball player, a soldier, a cowboy, and an astronaut. He’d already ticked off baseball with A League of Their Own (1992) and soldier with Forrest Gump (1994), so the astronaut was next on the list. The crew on the film reportedly nicknamed Hanks the “closet astronaut” because he already knew so much about NASA, the Gemini missions, and the Apollo programme.

Howard said that during filming at Cape Canaveral, Hanks dragged him out of bed early one morning to watch some “astronauts in action.” This turned out to mean watching them walk across a car park and into a building. Howard was apparently furious.

6. Hanks spent time with the real Lovells

When Hanks signed on, he received a telegram from Jim Lovell that read “Welcome Aboard Apollo 13.” To prepare for the role, Hanks spent four days with the real Lovells at their home in Texas, studying Jim’s mannerisms and speech patterns. The real Marilyn Lovell later said Hanks perfectly captured the way Jim talked. Kathleen Quinlan, who plays Marilyn in the film, also visited the Lovell home. And the Naval Academy ring Hanks wears throughout the film actually belonged to the real Jim Lovell, who gave it to Hanks to wear on set.

7. A famous line came from an unexpected set visitor

Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise is played in the film by Bill Paxton. Slated to become the sixth person to walk on the moon before the mission went wrong, Fred watches his dream shatter over the course of the film while clashing with crewmate Jack Swigert and battling the freezing cold of the module. Paxton wasn’t a shoo-in for the part, either. Michael Keaton was apparently considered, and both John Cusack and Charlie Sheen turned the role down.

One of Fred’s most memorable lines in the film, “I could eat the ass out of a dead rhinoceros,” wasn’t something the real Haise ever said. It reportedly came from actor Gary Busey, who was visiting the set one day. Busey had used a similar line in Point Break (1991), and it found its way into the script.

8. Fred’s on-screen sickness was based on reality

The moment when Fred throws up inside the module was drawn from real events. During the actual mission, the real Fred Haise had been ill with a virus a few weeks beforehand and did vomit aboard the spacecraft. For the film, the production used beef-a-roni for the on-screen vomit, and it looked every bit as unpleasant as you’d expect. During filming, Paxton apparently lost a bet with Hanks about something, and the forfeit was eating what was left of the beef-a-roni.

9. Two big names turned down the role of Jack Swigert

Kevin Bacon plays Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert in the film, the last-minute replacement who joins the crew just days before launch. Bacon wasn’t Ron Howard’s first choice, though. According to reports, Brad Pitt turned down the chance to play Jack in order to star in Se7en (1995), and Val Kilmer also said no so he could make The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). One of those decisions was arguably better judged than the other.

10. A key actor chose his own role

Gary Sinise plays Ken Mattingly, the astronaut bumped from the crew at the last minute over fears he’d been exposed to rubella. Ron Howard told Sinise he could read for any part he wanted, aside from Jim Lovell. After reading the script, Sinise went straight for Ken, a character who spends most of the film on the ground, working tirelessly in the simulator to help bring his crewmates home.

11. One of the biggest names initially turned down the offer

Howard always wanted Ed Harris to play Gene Kranz, the steely NASA Flight Director who drives mission control through the crisis. When Harris was first asked, though, he said no. He couldn’t see what he could bring to the part. Howard called him personally and explained that he saw Gene as pivotal to the entire film. That conversation was enough to change Harris’s mind, and the result is one of those performances that elevates every scene it touches.

12. The opening of the film was originally much longer

The film opens with voiceover narration and a brief history of the Apollo space programme, including the Apollo 1 disaster of 1967, in which three astronauts were killed during a rehearsal run when they couldn’t get the door hatch open. Originally, there was significantly more footage shot around the Apollo 1 disaster and how it affected the Apollo 13 crew, but those scenes were cut. Howard said you simply couldn’t start a story about Apollo 13 with seven minutes about Apollo 1, which seems like a fair call. The tragedy does get a callback later in the film, though, when Marilyn tells Jim’s son Jeffrey about the problems on the mission and he nervously asks, “Was it the door?”

13. The Lovell house was recreated from family photographs

The party sequence early in the film, where Jim and his family watch the Apollo 11 moon landing on television, is packed with period detail drawn from real life. Production designer Michael Corenblith and his team were given access to family photographs of the real Lovell family and used them to painstakingly recreate their Houston home. The living room set included authentic copies of the Yellow Pages, Life magazine, and TV Guide, all from the correct weeks. Set decorator Meredith Boswell briefed her team by saying, “Wherever Ron swings his camera, it needs to work.”

We also see that Jim has a Time magazine Men of the Year cover displayed on the wall. This was based on a real Time cover about the Apollo 8 crew, the first manned mission to orbit the moon in 1968, but the illustration had been redrawn with Tom Hanks’s face replacing Lovell’s. Also, the NASA communications speaker Marilyn uses to listen in on transmissions between mission control and the spacecraft throughout the film was something NASA families really did have in their homes. It was called a squawk box.

14. Chevrolet had a deal with NASA’s astronauts

In the film’s opening scenes, we see Jim driving a red Corvette. In the 1960s, Chevrolet had a deal with NASA where they gave all of their astronauts a free Corvette every year, which is why astronauts in Hollywood films always seem to be behind the wheel of flash sports cars. In real life, Jim Lovell’s Corvette was silver, but it was changed to red for the film.

15. Marilyn’s nightmare was inspired by another movie

Early in the film, we see a striking nightmare sequence in which everything goes wrong aboard Apollo 13 and Jim is blown out into space. It turns out to be a dream Marilyn is having, and it’s one of the most visceral moments in the movie. The real Marilyn Lovell later said she genuinely did have nightmares like this after Jim had taken her to see Marooned (1969), a space disaster film directed by John Sturges and starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman, about a group of astronauts who get trapped on a mission in outer space. A somewhat inconsiderate cinema trip from Jim, all things considered.

16. The real Apollo 13 crew was a backup crew

The original crew for the Apollo 13 mission was supposed to be Alan Shepard (the first American in space, famous for playing golf on the moon), Edgar Mitchell, and Stuart Roosa. When Shepard developed an inner ear disorder, the crew was bumped to Apollo 14 and replaced with the backup crew for Apollo 11: Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Ken Mattingly. Then, just seven days before launch, one of the Apollo 13 backup crew, Charles Duke, caught rubella from a friend of his son. Mattingly had never been inoculated, so had to be replaced by Jack Swigert at the last minute. (Don’t feel too bad for Ken, though. He piloted Apollo 16, which successfully landed on the moon in 1972, so he got his moment.)

17. Mission control was too small to film in

To film the NASA mission control scenes, Howard wanted to shoot inside the original Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center in Houston. When they visited, though, they realised it was simply too small for a film crew. So production designer Michael Corenblith and set decorator Meredith Boswell had measurements taken and built an exact replica on a soundstage at Universal Studios. The replica was so convincing that Jerry Bostick, a real NASA Flight Controller hired as a consultant on the film, said he once left the set and stood waiting for an elevator for a couple of minutes before remembering he wasn’t in the real building.

The computer screens in the control room were all driven by a piece of specially written software managed by a computer hidden below the set. Howard said the software was problematic, though, and they lost three full days of filming waiting for it to be fixed. Those same screens turned up again years later as the District 13 control room in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2014).

18. Howard told his effects team to shoot like Scorsese

The Visual Effects Supervisor on the film was Robert Legato, who had previously worked on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the popular science fiction television series. The original plan was to use real NASA stock footage of the Saturn V rocket taking off, but Legato told Howard that shooting new footage would look much better. Howard agreed, but with a specific instruction: “If you’re going to do that, can you shoot it like Martin Scorsese would shoot it?” Legato studied The Color of Money (1986), Martin Scorsese’s drama starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, and noticed that the pool scenes stayed on certain shots for just two or three frames before cutting. They applied the same rapid-fire editing technique to the launch sequence.

The effects team, Digital Domain (the visual effects studio founded by James Cameron and special effects legend Stan Winston), created the launch using a combination of miniatures of the Saturn V rocket, background shots of Cape Canaveral, and explosions filmed on a soundstage, all composited into one shot and filmed at 240 frames per second for slow motion. NASA sent real footage of Saturn V launches that the team studied to recreate the look of the fireballs. And one of the most impressive wide shots of the rocket used something far less sophisticated than a miniature: a $20 Revell toy version of Saturn V.

19. A scene critics called too on-the-nose actually happened

Ron Howard later said that some critics took issue with the scene where Marilyn loses her wedding ring down the shower drain, calling it an overly obvious bad-luck omen. But it was drawn directly from life. The real Marilyn Lovell confirmed she dropped her ring down the drain and had to get a plumber in to retrieve it.

20. Gene Kranz’s famous waistcoat has a story behind it

The white waistcoat that Ed Harris wears as Gene Kranz throughout the mission control scenes is based on reality. The real Kranz used to dress that way during missions, earning him the nickname “White Flight.” The vest he wore during the actual Apollo 13 crisis is now on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The Apollo 13 mission insignia on the waistcoat has its own story, too. It depicts the Greek god Apollo’s three horses in front of the moon and was designed by an artist called Lumen Martin Winter. Jim Lovell had originally spotted a mural Winter had painted of Apollo in a New York hotel and commissioned him to design the insignia. After the film wrapped, Tom Hanks apparently bought that original hotel mural as a gift for Lovell.

21. The director’s family is all over the film

Ron Howard’s family makes quite a few appearances in Apollo 13. His brother Clint plays Seymour Liebergot, one of the flight controllers. His father, Rance Howard, plays a priest we see at the Lovells’ home. His wife Cheryl and daughter Bryce Dallas Howard appear as extras in the launch sequence (Bryce is easy to spot, dressed all in yellow with her striking red hair). And Ron’s mother, Jean Speegle Howard, plays Jim Lovell’s mother, Blanche, who gets some of the film’s most entertaining lines. The real Marilyn Lovell also appears as an extra in the launch scene.

22. A Hollywood legend got a cameo as a thank you

The first film Ron Howard ever directed was Grand Theft Auto (1977), and it was distributed by New World Pictures, the production company belonging to legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman. Howard paid Corman back years later by giving him a small role in Apollo 13. He appears in the early scene where Jim is giving a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, playing a senator who asks Jim a few questions about the upcoming missions.

23. Spielberg suggested how to film some key scenes

Howard knew one of the biggest challenges in making the film would be shooting the zero-gravity scenes inside the command module. They looked into digital effects and having the actors strapped into harnesses, but neither approach worked convincingly. Howard then discussed the problem with Steven Spielberg, who suggested using the KC-135, the plane NASA used to train their astronauts to work in weightless conditions. Known as the “vomit comet,” the plane climbs to 38,000 feet and then dives for 15,000 feet, creating a brief weightless effect inside the cabin. The production did 612 dives in total, accumulating 54 minutes of footage to choose from. It was a big talking point at the time, that the actors were filming in genuinely weightless conditions, and the results hold up perfectly because, well, it’s real.

24. Real photographs from space were used

The first scenes in space, where we see the astronauts’ view of Earth through the module windows, were created using real photographs taken during the Apollo 8 mission. Those images were shot by Jim Lovell himself on his first flight into space in 1968. Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to reach the moon, orbiting it ten times before returning to Earth, and the photographs it produced, known as “Earthrise,” remain some of the most iconic images ever taken.

25. The most famous line was slightly rewritten

“Houston, we have a problem.” It’s one of the most famous lines in any Hollywood film, but it wasn’t quite what was said in real life. According to the actual mission transcripts, Jack Swigert first said, “Okay Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” Houston replied, “This is Houston. Say again, please.” And Jim Lovell followed up with, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Howard changed the tense from “we’ve had” to “we have” so that it didn’t sound like the crisis had already passed.

26. The film’s tagline was invented for the script

“Failure is not an option.” It’s one of the defining lines of the film, delivered by Ed Harris as Gene Kranz rallies his team. The line was invented for the movie, but it took on a life of its own, becoming the tagline on the poster, the title of an official NASA documentary in 2004, and the title of the real Gene Kranz’s autobiography.

The screenwriters, Al Reinert and Bill Broyles Jr., came up with the line after interviewing Jerry Bostick during the writing process, so the sentiment actually originated with Bostick himself. There’s another line in the film that was taken directly from real life: when Jim tells his crewmates, “Gentlemen, what are your intentions? I’d like to go home.” According to Jeffrey Kluger, the real Lovell said this because Swigert and Haise were busy taking photographs of the moon.

27. The set was refrigerated so the actors’ breath was real

As the mission worsens, the module becomes freezing cold, and we can see the astronauts’ breath as they talk. To achieve this, Howard had the Universal soundstage refrigerated to just one degree above freezing, so what we’re seeing on screen is genuinely the actors’ breath. It also created some character tension when Fred and Jack snap at one another.

However, Tom Jones, a NASA astronaut who flew on four space shuttle missions and served as a consultant on the film, told Howard that the argument between Fred and Jack in these scenes wouldn’t have happened in real life between two trained astronauts. Howard acknowledged this but explained, “I know, but I’m trying to show tension. We can only show a sweaty forehead so many times before it loses its effect.”

28. A legendary news anchor re-recorded his own reports

Walter Cronkite was the anchor of CBS News during the Apollo missions, the person relaying much of the information about the crisis to the American public. He was also the journalist who had broken the news of the JFK assassination and broadcast the Apollo 11 moon landing. For the film, Howard hired Cronkite as an actor and had him re-record some of his original reports, making them slightly more dramatic for the screen.

29. The book’s co-author appears in the film

Jeffrey Kluger was hired by Howard to serve as a technical consultant on the film and was on set every day of production. He also wrote some of the dialogue for the news broadcasts and appears in the film himself, playing a television reporter. After he completed his first take, Kluger heard Jim Lovell’s voice from somewhere on the set saying, “There’s gonna be no living with him now.”

30. The screenwriters had never written a film before

The screenwriters of Apollo 13 were Al Reinert and William Broyles Jr., two journalists-turned-screenwriters for whom this was the first film writing credit. Broyles had created China Beach, a television medical war drama, and was looking to break into feature films. He dropped by Imagine Entertainment and pitched a romantic comedy idea, which they passed on. But because of China Beach and his military background, Michael Bostick suggested to Ron Howard that they hire Broyles to take a crack at Apollo 13 instead. Broyles had previously worked with Al Reinert, whose most notable work at the time was For All Mankind, an Oscar-nominated documentary about the Apollo missions, so he asked Reinert to co-write. Broyles had grown up 25 miles from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and when Bostick first spoke to him about the project, he apparently said, “I was born to write this movie.”

31. The screenwriters made key additions to the book’s story

Pretty much all of the main plot points in the film happened as described, but Broyles and Reinert made some notable changes when adapting Lost Moon for the screen. The book focuses primarily on what happens aboard the Odyssey spacecraft and in mission control, so for the film, Reinert and Broyles added all of the scenes with Marilyn and the Lovell family to bring more character drama. They also expanded Ken Mattingly’s role significantly. His storyline and the drama around being bumped from the crew is only hinted at in the book rather than described in detail. The writers said the more research they did, the more they realised they didn’t really have to invent anything. Everything they needed for a Hollywood movie was already there. The only real adjustment came after Tom Hanks was cast as Lovell, as they felt the character they’d written didn’t suit Hanks’s screen presence. As Reinert put it, “We’d written John Wayne, and they hired Jimmy Stewart.”

32. An acclaimed screenwriter wrote the nursing home scenes

An earlier draft of the script also had John Sayles as a credited screenwriter. Sayles, known for writing The Howling (1981) and earning Oscar nominations for Passion Fish (1992) and Lone Star (1996), isn’t credited on the final film, but Howard said his main contribution was writing the scenes with Jim’s mother Blanche in the nursing home.

33. The composer had a huge body of work

The score for Apollo 13 was composed by James Horner, who by that point had already worked on over 70 films, including two previous collaborations with Ron Howard on Cocoon (1985) and Willow (1988). Horner would go on to compose some of the most celebrated scores in cinema history, including Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009). For Apollo 13, he enlisted some help from Annie Lennox, who provides ethereal vocals on several tracks.

34. The Beatles nearly featured on the soundtrack

There’s also a lot of period-accurate pop music used throughout the film. During the real public broadcast from the spacecraft, the crew played Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra” (the classical piece memorably used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968), but Fred plays “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum instead. We also hear The Who and James Brown on the soundtrack.

Howard wanted to use The Beatles in the scene where Jim’s daughter Barbara is upset that the band has split up, but couldn’t get the rights, so we hear “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix instead. That scene exists because in the real Apollo 13 transcripts, there’s a conversation where the crew ask mission control what’s happening on Earth, and one of the controllers responds, “The Beatles broke up.”

35. A space museum helped build the spacecraft sets

As well as recreating the Lovell house and mission control, production designer Michael Corenblith did extensive research into building the sets for the Odyssey command module and Aquarius lunar module. He contacted the Cosmosphere, a large space museum in Kansas, whose SpaceWorks division specialises in recreation work and holds around 13,000 NASA artefacts. They provided plans and specifications for the original machinery, which were used to build the module sets.

36. The visual effects fooled the man who was actually there

Digital Domain’s work on the film proved remarkably convincing. Jim Lovell said that the first time he saw the finished film, he found the CGI so realistic that he assumed Howard had somehow found unreleased NASA footage and used it. If your effects fool the person who lived through the real thing, you know you’ve done the job.

37. The spacesuits had to be pumped with oxygen

The astronauts’ spacesuits cost $30,000 each to produce and were made by SpaceWorks, the recreation division of the Cosmosphere museum. They were built to be as realistic as possible, which meant the helmets genuinely locked airtight. As a result, oxygen had to be pumped into the suits for the actors to breathe while wearing them.

38. Four engine burns were condensed into one

One of the film’s most tense sequences is the engine burn the crew must execute to give them the momentum to get home. Jeffrey Kluger said that in reality, the burn wasn’t as dramatic as it appears on screen and was more of a formality. The crew also didn’t have to perform just one burn; they had to do four. The writers condensed them all into a single sequence for the film, with only a passing reference to an additional burn.

Similarly, Ken Mattingly’s role in discovering the new power-up procedure was more of a collaborative effort among the ground team in real life, rather than being primarily about Ken, as the film suggests. Both are fair changes for the screen, though. Having the same scene four times would test anyone’s patience.

39. Two moonwalking legends kept Blanche company

Something that was drawn from reality is the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin turn up at Blanche Lovell’s nursing home to keep her company during the crisis. According to Kluger, the Apollo astronauts were all very close and knew each other’s families well. Armstrong and Aldrin really did look in on Blanche Lovell at one point during the mission.

40. Harris improvised Gene’s most emotional moment

In real life, the astronauts made voice communication with mission control much later than expected during re-entry, but it wasn’t quite as dramatic as the film portrays. In reality, mission control had already picked the command module up on radar, so they knew the crew had made it back before voice contact was re-established. The film, understandably, plays the silence for maximum tension, cutting across all the different groups watching and waiting.

Also, Ed Harris ad-libbed the moment when Gene collapses into his chair and gets emotional after contact is restored. Harris said he came up with it after watching real footage from the time, in which the real Gene Kranz got visibly emotional talking about his feelings when the astronauts made it back safely. The real Gene Kranz also appears in this scene, standing at the back of mission control in a blue Air Force uniform, just before re-entry.

41. The splashdown was filmed by throwing a model about

The original plan was to create the module splashing down into the Pacific Ocean using CGI. Robert Legato, however, had other ideas. He said, “No, we’re not doing that. We’re going to throw it out of a helicopter and film it.” A three-quarter-size scale model of the module was built, and that’s exactly what they did.

Incidentally, the actual real-life command module was recovered after the mission and is now on display at the Cosmosphere museum in Kansas.

42. The real Jim Lovell appears in the film

The ship that picked up the module from the Pacific in 1970 was the USS Iwo Jima, but it had been decommissioned by the time the film was made, so instead, Howard used the USS New Orleans, which had recovered Apollo 14 when it returned. When Jim boards the recovery ship in the film and shakes the captain’s hand, the captain is played by the real Jim Lovell. Howard asked if he’d like to play an Admiral, but Lovell declined, saying, “I retired a Captain, so a Captain I am.”

43. A test screening produced one incredible comment card

The film tested well with audiences at early screenings, but Ron Howard said one particular comment card stood out. It was written by a 23-year-old viewer who marked the film down and wrote: “Typical Hollywood ending. In reality, the crew would never have survived.”

44. Lovell’s checklist sold for almost $400,000

Having featured so heavily in the film, Jim Lovell’s real checklist book from the 1970 mission went up for auction in 2011 and sold for almost $400,000. NASA got involved and tried to claim the checklist belonged to them, not Lovell, until President Barack Obama created a law giving astronauts ownership of personal materials like that. And in 1996, a group of astronomers from Arizona called Spacewatch discovered a new asteroid. Having all loved the film, they named the asteroid 12818 Tom Hanks.

45. The film was a major hit at the box office and the Oscars

From a total production budget of $52 million, Apollo 13 grossed $355.2 million worldwide, making it a huge commercial success. At the Academy Awards, it won two Oscars for Best Sound and Best Film Editing, and was nominated for a further seven, including Best Picture, Best Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor for Ed Harris, and Best Supporting Actress for Kathleen Quinlan. Today, on Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating from critics and 87% from audiences. On IMDb, it sits at a respectable 7.7 out of 10.

And you’ve reached the end: 45 huge facts about Apollo 13, one of the great true-story blockbusters. Please share on your social media channels, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for lots of great video content.