Film debut of Grace Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter. She plays Streep's character, Clara, as a young girl.
After numerous unpleasant meetings with filmmakers, Isabel Allende had instructed her agent to stop all discussion about making a film from her novel. She felt that none of them had any real love or vision for the material, they just wanted to option the book before anyone else could make the movie. She initially turned down even Bille August's offer. It wasn't until he rented a San Francisco theater and screened his Pelle the Conqueror (1987) for her that she changed her mind; an hour into that screening, she knew that he was the right director: "He was totally in love with the story [...]. He knew the book by heart, all the characters, everything. And he had a very clear vision of how that could be turned into a two-hour movie."
The women in the family (Nívea, Clara, Blanca and Alba) are all named after Spanish words that evoke the color white.
Antonio Banderas hardly spoke English at the time of filming, which is why his character had little dialogue.
Principal photography took place in Denmark, but some scenes were filmed in Lisbon and Alentejo, Portugal.
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