Actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire have been friends since childhood. This marks the first time they have appeared in a film together since Don's Plum (2001). Before this, they appeared together in This Boy's Life (1993).
On the first day of shooting, director Baz Luhrmann filmed the scene where Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and Daisy Buchanan have tea during a rainstorm. Since it was a beautiful spring day, Luhrmann had to use 100,000 liters of water to create the downpour seen in the film. Immediately afterward, it rained for the next three days.
Leonardo DiCaprio wanted to play Jay Gatsby because he was drawn to the idea of a man who came from absolutely nothing, who created himself solely from his imagination. When speaking about the role, he said: "Gatsby is one of those iconic characters because he can be interpreted in many ways - as a hopeless romantic, a completely obsessed wacko, or a dangerous gangster clinging to wealth."
Both this film and an earlier adaptation, The Great Gatsby (1974), won the Oscar for Best Costume Design at the Academy Awards.
A photograph of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, hangs on the wall of the apartment that Tom Buchanan shares with Myrtle Wilson. Although Zelda's photograph appears in the film, the character of Daisy Buchanan was primarily based on Fitzgerald's first love, Ginevra King, a wealthy Chicago socialite whom he could not marry due to his lack of money. Despite his later marriage to Zelda Sayre which Fitzgerald described as a disappointment, Fitzgerald continued to yearn for King as an unobtainable ideal who embodied the elusive American Dream.
Baz Luhrmann: The waiter that brings Nick to Jordan's table to meet for tea after his lunch with Gatsby.