42 Fun Facts About True Lies

During the night-time street chase in True Lies, Harry pursues Aziz's motorcycle while riding what?

A police horse. Harry pulls a mounted officer out of the saddle and gallops after the bike through a hotel and into its elevator, grumbling over the radio that his horse is getting tired.

True Lies is a remake of a 1991 comedy from which country?

France. La Totale! starred Thierry Lhermitte as the secret agent, and a Paris appeal court later ruled that its makers had taken the story from another writer's unproduced script.

Harry Tasker's family believes he sells what for a living?

Computer hardware. The dull sales job at a front company called Tektel Systems explains his constant business trips, and he has lied about it convincingly to Helen for 15 years.

What is the name of the top-secret counterterrorism agency Harry really works for?

Omega Sector. Harry turns the agency's agents, wiretaps and helicopter on his own wife as soon as he suspects her of having an affair.

The terrorist group Harry is chasing goes by what name?

Crimson Jihad. Its leader, Salim Abu Aziz, threatens to destroy one American city a week with smuggled nuclear warheads unless US forces leave the Persian Gulf.

Who plays Harry's wisecracking partner Albert 'Gib' Gibson?

Tom Arnold. Cameron said he would not dream of making a sequel without him, and Arnold did come back in 2023, guest-starring in the television remake as a retired agent.

Which actor plays the used-car salesman who poses as a spy to seduce women?

Bill Paxton. His fake spy is frightened into leaving Helen alone, then turns up a year later working as a waiter and still telling the same lie.

Who plays Juno Skinner, the art dealer secretly working for the terrorists?

Tia Carrere. Fresh from playing Cassandra in the Wayne's World films, she ends this one in a limousine that plunges off a bombed bridge just after Helen is lifted out of it.

Which British actor plays terrorist leader Salim Abu Aziz?

Art Malik. His villain ends the film snagged on one of the jet's missiles, which Harry then launches at the terrorists' helicopter.

Which future Buffy the Vampire Slayer star plays the Taskers' teenage daughter Dana?

Eliza Dushku. Her Dana turns the finale by snatching the terrorists' arming key and running for the roof with it, years before Dushku joined Buffy as the rogue slayer Faith.

Which Hollywood legend plays the agency's director, Spencer Trilby?

Charlton Heston. In little more than a cameo, he tears into Harry's team for the botched mission and demands hard proof of the nuclear plot.

Grant Heslov, True Lies' Faisil, later shared a Best Picture Oscar with Ben Affleck and George Clooney for which film?

Argo. Heslov went on to become George Clooney's producing partner and collected the 2013 Best Picture Oscar beside him.

The party Harry infiltrates in a tuxedo at the start of True Lies is set in which country?

Switzerland. Harry comes home with a snowy-village souvenir for his daughter to prop up the story that he had been away on business.

The Gilded Age mansion whose ballroom hosts the opening tango is in which US city?

Newport, Rhode Island. The ballroom belongs to Rosecliff, whose builder, silver heiress Tessie Oelrichs, was so eager to entertain that she threw her first party there before the house was finished.

The tango Harry dances at the party, 'Por una Cabeza', was written by which Argentine singing star of the 1930s?

Carlos Gardel. He wrote the tune with lyricist Alfredo Le Pera for a 1935 film, and within months both men were dead, killed in the same plane crash in Colombia.

What family occasion does Harry miss because he is chasing Aziz through the city?

His own birthday party. He had promised Helen he would be home by eight, and the day after breaking that promise he overhears her arranging to meet another man.

Harry suspects Helen of an affair after overhearing her arrange to meet a man with what first name?

Simon. He is a used-car salesman who tells bored housewives he is a spy, so Harry's team arrests him as the terrorist Carlos the Jackal to scare him away from Helen.

During the staged 'mission', Helen is sent to a hotel room to seduce a stranger and do what?

Plant a bug. The stranger is Harry himself in disguise, and the game he is playing ends when Aziz's men burst into the room and capture them both.

The terrorists fly Harry and Helen to their island base in which chain?

The Florida Keys. Harry works out why: the Overseas Highway lets the terrorists truck their warheads to the mainland without crossing a border or passing customs.

Juno Skinner smuggles the terrorists' warheads into the United States hidden inside what?

Antique statues. Juno calls the four Persian warrior figures priceless, sighs that it is a pity, and has them broken open with jackhammers to reveal a warhead in each.

Military jets blow up part of which real Overseas Highway span to stop the terrorists' convoy?

The Seven Mile Bridge. Nothing real was destroyed: the crew blew up a model of the old span, which a new bridge alongside it had replaced in 1982.

Which military jet does Harry commandeer for the finale of True Lies?

A Harrier. Harry has not flown one for ten years and says any damage can come out of his pay; two real Marine Corps Harriers and their pilots flew for the film.

In the True Lies finale, Aziz chases Dana onto what structure on the roof of a Miami skyscraper?

A tower crane. Dana has stolen the bomb's arming key and edges out along the crane's arm, dangling it over the drop to keep it from Aziz until her father arrives.

On the terrorists' island in True Lies, Harry is injected with what?

Truth serum. Helen seizes the moment to ask how long he has been a spy and whether he has ever killed anyone, and he admits that he has, 'but they were all bad'.

True Lies was the first film whose production budget reached what figure?

$100 million. Cameron then broke through the next barrier himself: three years later his Titanic became the first film to cost $200 million.

True Lies was the first major project for which visual effects company co-founded by Cameron?

Digital Domain. Cameron opened it in 1993 with creature-effects master Stan Winston and Scott Ross, a former lieutenant of George Lucas, to compete with Lucas's own effects house.

Which future Titanic and Avatar producer did Cameron meet as the Fox 'suit' on True Lies?

Jon Landau. Cameron lured him away from Fox once the shoot was over, and the two went on working together for 31 years.

Who composed the True Lies score, as he had for The Terminator and Terminator 2?

Brad Fiedel. It was his third feature score for Cameron; for Titanic the director turned to James Horner, who won two Oscars for it.

Which film did True Lies knock off the top of the US box office on its opening weekend?

True Lies opened at number one on 15 July 1994, pushing Forrest Gump to second; the Tom Hanks film retook the top spot a week later.

True Lies was the highest-grossing import of 1995 in which country, then newly open to Hollywood blockbusters?

China. The country had begun letting in a handful of Hollywood hits only in 1994, and True Lies earned about four times as much there as The Fugitive, the film that had opened the door.

Jamie Lee Curtis won which major award for playing Helen?

The Golden Globe. Curtis really did hang from a helicopter cable over open water while Cameron filmed her, though she credits a stuntwoman with the pull from the falling limousine.

True Lies' only Academy Award nomination came in which category?

Best Visual Effects. Supervisor John Bruno and three colleagues shared the nomination, but the Oscar went to the year's Best Picture winner instead.

In True Lies, what does Harry say as he launches the missile with Aziz snagged on it?

You're fired. The pun is literal: Aziz is caught on the jet's Sidewinder missile, and Harry launches it, passenger and all, into the terrorists' waiting helicopter.

Cameron ultimately said the planned True Lies 2 would not be made because of which event?

The September 11 attacks. Cameron wrote that he no longer felt comfortable getting laughs from nuclear-armed terrorists, and called True Lies 'a product of a more innocent time'.

Acclaim's True Lies game came out for SNES, Game Boy, Game Gear and which other system?

Sega Genesis. The game punishes careless shooting: kill three bystanders in one mission and Harry loses a life and has to start the mission again.

The 2023 True Lies series aired on which US network, which had also rebooted Hawaii Five-0 and MacGyver?

CBS. The network launched the series in March 2023 and cancelled it that May, after a single season.

For her staged spy mission in True Lies, Helen is given which code name?

Doris. Helen hopes for Natasha, to go with her contact's code name of Boris, and is plainly let down by the dowdier name she is handed instead.

What did critics blame for the look of True Lies' 2024 4K Blu-ray?

AI upscaling. The machine-learning restoration made the film sharper than ever, yet some viewers and critics said it had ruined the picture.

The Tasker family lives in the suburbs of which city in True Lies?

Washington. While Harry hunts terrorists across the capital, his wife is told he is in a sales meeting, and she is later lured to a fake rendezvous of her own under the Key Bridge.

In True Lies, what cuts Aziz off in the middle of recording his video threat to America?

The camera's battery dies. The warning light flashes all through his speech while the cameraman is too frightened to interrupt, and Aziz's menace collapses into shouting for a spare.

What is Helen Tasker's job in True Lies?

Legal secretary. Under interrogation she explains why a stranger's spy stories tempted her away from that desk: she wanted, she says, 'to do something outrageous' and to feel needed.

James Cameron says he always classified True Lies, a spy film about a marriage, as what kind of epic?

Domestic. Cameron's label points at the joke that drives the film: its hero can outwit nuclear terrorists, yet has spent fifteen years lying to his own wife about what he does.