Brian De Palma’s iconic horror film “Carrie” turns 40 this week. The film marked Sissy Spacek’s breakout role, as she played a social outcast whose telekinetic powers wreak blood-curdling havoc on her high school prom. TheWrap has teamed up with IMDb to share some of the most eye-popping facts about the movie.
Director Brian De Palma and George Lucas were casting the same type of actors for their respective projects — so they combined efforts. Essentially, everyone who read lines for “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” also read for “Carrie.” De Palma remembered that Amy Irving — eventually cast in “Carrie” — got very close to landing the role of Princess Leia instead of Carrie Fisher.
William Katt (pictured, right) played Carrie’s handsome and popular prom date. But he originally read for the part of Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars.” Watch his audition here.
As Sissy Spacek recounted in her 2012 memoir, she isolated herself from the rest of the “Carrie” cast, decorated her dressing room with religious iconography and studied Gustave Doré’s illustrated Bible. Specifically, she looked closely at “the body language of people being stoned for their sins” and either started or ended every scene in one of those positions.
There were at least three notable offscreen romantic connections tied to “Carrie”: Steven Spielberg would often visit the set because he heard about the the film’s many attractive women — one of whom was his future wife Amy Irving. (They divorced in 1989.) De Palma also plucked his future wife, Nancy Allen (pictured), from his bevy of young “Carrie” actresses. (The two divorced in 1983.) And Sissy Spacek was already married to Jack Fisk, who was the art director that designed the film’s famous graveside jump scare at the end. (They’re still married!)
Before her iconic horror movie role, Sissy Spacek was set dresser in a prior De Palma movie, 1974’s “Phantom of the Paradise.” It was her husband Jack Fisk who encouraged her to audition for “Carrie.”
John Travolta had a supporting role in “Carrie” as one of the pranksters who conspires to pour pigs’ blood on the bullied leading lady. It was his second-ever film part and just a year before he starred in his breakout movie role in “Saturday Night Fever.”
The prom scene took days to film, in part, because the blood poured all over Sissy Spacek proved problematic. It dried under the hot lights, forcing filmmakers to hose down their lead actress to achieve the right consistency. Spacek would sleep in the fake blood, according to reports, to ensure the visual continuity of the movie remained intact.
Go to IMDb’s “Carrie” page for more trivia, quotes and goofs.
