Back in 1996, in what was a pre-Titanic world, nothing was hotter than the pairing of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the titular star-crossed lovers in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.
The 21-year-old DiCaprio was just coming into his own as the sensitive, sun-kissed heartthrob of the 1990s and 17-year-old Danes, fresh from a Golden Globe win for the sole season of the taken-before-its-time cult classic My So-Called Life, was the hero of high school girls everywhere—and, upon this film's arrival, the envy of so many.
Which is why Baz Luhrmann's frenetic, colorful take on the 16th-century tragedy, in which Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Montagues battle slickly embellished Capulets with guns instead of swords on the shores of Verona Beach, had teens packing theaters for an olde English lesson, set to the sounds of a best-selling soundtrack that included Garbage's "#1 Crush," The Cardigans earworm "Lovefool" and Des'ree's love-at-first-sight-through-the-fish-tank theme song "Kissing You."
With a $147.6 million haul at the box office, Romeo + Juliet remains the highest-grossing cinematic take on a Shakespeare play—minus the loosely Hamlet-inspired The Lion King, which made almost a billion dollars, and Best Picture Oscar winner Shakespeare in Love, which, among its various liberties with the playwright's origin story, spices up the premiere of Romeo and Juliet. (And surely Steven Spielberg would love to surpass that when his version of West Side Story finally comes out Dec. 10.)
But though it's one of the most staged plays of all time, and had already been made into two classic movies, in 1936 and 1968 (the latter becoming the highest-grossing Shakespeare film ever at that time), Romeo + Juliet "was an incredibly difficult film to get made," Luhrmann said in a 1996 interview.
He had a first-look deal after making his feature directing debut with the smash-hit Strictly Ballroom in his native Australia, but nothing particularly inspired him for a few years until the prospect of making Romeo and Juliet the way Shakespeare himself might do it came along.
"He was a relentless entertainer and a user of incredible devices and theatrical tricks to ultimately create something of meaning and convey a story," Luhrmann explained of the Bard. "That was what we wanted to do. We were interested in that experience."
People may have been thinking after the movie came out, "How clever. What genius at the studio rang you up and said, 'Do a funky MTV-style Shakespeare and wipe the floor with all the other pictures, go to number one and get the kids in?'" he reflected. "That was not the case."
And it's quite possible that none of it would have happened if DiCaprio hadn't been onboard from the beginning, flying to Sydney on his own dime to workshop the idea with Luhrmann and some local actors before they took it to 20th Century Fox and secured a relatively small budget of $14.5 million.
Which, considering the cast they ended up with, was quite the bargain.
On the occasion of the unique film's 25th anniversary, take a look at the star-studded lineup then and now. They've done a few things since:
We hear the fellow who played Romeo went on to do good things, his eyes hardly looking their last at Hollywood.
Before Romeo + Juliet hit theaters, DiCaprio had already started shooting a small film about boats and ice called Titanic, still the third-highest-grossing movie of all time. Then it was on to a lifetime of environmental activism, starting his own production company and working almost exclusively with the most acclaimed directors in the business, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Nolan, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Quentin Tarantino, and he reunited with Baz Luhrmann for The Great Gatsby. He won the Best Actor Oscar for Iñárritu's The Revenant in 2016 and, while he seems pretty serious with girlfriend Camila Marrone these days, his decades of dating history include Gisele Bündchen, Blake Lively, Bar Refaeli and Toni Garrn.
Next up DiCaprio stars in the Adam McKay-directed Don't Look Up and Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, among other projects in the works.
Teaching the torches to burn bright and hanging upon the cheek of night, Danes played the tragic Juliet, who, along with Romeo, is down for the count the second they lock eyes at her family's masquerade ball. They fall gloriously in love and it's all downhill from there.
Not so for Danes herself, who attended Yale for a bit and then starred in films as varied as U Turn, The Rainmaker, 1998's Les Misérables with Liam Neeson, The Mod Squad, Igby Goes Down, The Hours, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Stage Beauty, Shopgirl, The Family Stone and Evening.
After hitting the ground running as a teenager with a Golden Globe win and Emmy nomination for My So-Called Life, she returned to the Emmy stage in 2010 as a winner for acting in a TV movie for Temple Grandin (also winning a Golden Globe and SAG Award) and has since won two more Emmys, two more Globes and another SAG Award for her performance as unstable, unstoppable CIA agent Carrie Mathison in Showtime's long-running drama Homeland, which just concluded in 2020.
Next up Danes stars with Tom Hiddleston in the British miniseries The Essex Serpent, headed for Apple TV+.
She has been married to actor Hugh Dancy since 2009 and they have two children together.
The Brooklyn native was actually having quite the career before the TV phenomenon that was Lost made him magazine-cover famous.
After getting his start on the TV series Fame as a dancer, he was on the family drama I'll Fly Away and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for the film Smoke, and then came his breakout role as the eloquent Mercutio, Romeo's wisest, wittiest friend who's tragically cut down in the crossfire between Capulet and Montague.
Then it was on to films such as Blood and Wine, The Edge, The Best Man, Woman on Top, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, as well as a starring role on the HBO prison drama Oz—and then he played embattled dad Michael Dawson on Lost, sharing a SAG Award win for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2005.
Later came movies including Zero Dark Thirty and The Best Man Holiday, as well as prominent arcs on Sons of Anarchy, Goliath, Criminal Minds, Star and The Rookie, plus a starring role on Claws. Next up, Perrineau is working on the supernatural series From, set to premiere in 2022.
He married model-actress Brittany Robinson in 2002 and they have three daughters together, including Jem and the Holograms actress Aurora Perrineau.
The prolific actor, activist and creator/star of one-man Broadway shows Freak, Sexaholix, Ghetto Clown and Latin History for Morons played the trigger-happy Tybalt, Juliet's cousin whom they call "the Prince of Cats"—and who seethes with rage at the mere thought of a Montague.
Leguizamo has been in multiple movies almost every year since 1996, including Summer of Sam, Moulin Rouge! (reteaming with Luhrmann to play painter Toulouse-Lautrec), The Happening, Miracle at St. Anna, The Lincoln Lawyer, Chef and John Wick. He also voiced Sid the sloth in all of the Ice Age movies, and notable recent small-screen work includes Bloodline, Waco (earning an Emmy nomination), When They See Us (also Emmy-nominated) and providing his voice to Bojack Horseman and The Mandalorian.
He won an Emmy in 1999 for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Program for John Leguizamo: Freak, the Spike Lee-filmed performance of his first one-man show.
Leguizamo has been married to second wife Justine Maurer since 2003 and they have two children.
A total "hey, it's that guy" for the ages, Mihok played Romeo's right-hand man Benvolio.
His first three films, Foxfire, Sleepers and Romeo + Juliet, came out within three months of each other in 1996. Subsequent highlights of his very busy career include The Thin Red Line, Silver Linings Playbook, appearing on everything from Law & Order to Felicity to The Good Wife, and costarring on Ray Donovan. He's currently in the midst of an arc as an Albanian mob henchman on Law & Order: Organized Crime and he's in the Ben Affleck-Ana de Armas thriller Deep Water, due out in 2022.
And that's him waltzing Alanis Morissette through time in the video for her song "So Pure," which she also supposedly wrote about him when they dated for a bit.
Mihok has been married to Valeria Mason since 2009 and they have two children.
Well, someone's aged like a fine wine since playing Juliet's parent-approved suitor Dave Paris, who obviously didn't stand a chance—but who, unlike in the play, makes it out of this blood bath alive.
Rudd went on to be Paul Freakin' Rudd of House Apatow, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Kansas City sports fandom, as well as co-owner of Samuel's Sweet Shop in Rhinebeck, N.Y., with Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Next up for the actor is Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the Apple TV+ series The Shrink Next Door and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Rudd has been married to wife Julie since 2003 and they have two children together.
The late, admired star of stage and screen who added a solid presence to whatever he was in, from First Blood to Cocoon to Tommy Boy, played Romeo's dad, Ted Montague. (In fair Verona Beach, the parents got first names.)
"Actors love Shakespeare because it's like giving them a sports car," Luhrmann said in 1996. "They have a lot to say, and actors like to talk, God knows. It was a meticulous rehearsal process, but they dug it. There's no actor on that show that's not happy. Brian Dennehy had three lines. He's a terrific stage actor. I just asked him. I said, 'Look, I really need someone who could really believe he's Leonardo's father and someone with real credibility and who has good craft.'"
A six-time Emmy nominee, Dennehy won a Golden Globe in 2001 for the televised staging of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, having also earned a Tony Award in 1999 for his turn as Willy Loman. He won his second Best Actor in a Play Tony in 2003 for Long Day's Journey Into Tonight.
With hundreds of film, TV and theater credits to his name, Dennehy died in April 2020 at the age of 81, survived by his second wife and five children.
The star of Law & Order and Goodfellas played Juliet's father, Fulgencio Capulet—another role of few lines but which also required a formidable presence.
Later films included Bulworth and The Cooler, and most recently the veteran character actor, opera singer and artist has been on the Epix series Godfather of Harlem, playing real-life mob boss Frank Costello—tough guy being a role the native New Yorker has been cast in more than a few times.
He also made headlines in 2018 in the wake of his daughter Mira Sorvino's allegation that producer Harvey Weinstein had sexually harassed her and put a wrench in her career progress after her Best Supporting Actress Oscar win for Mighty Aphrodite in 1996. When TMZ approached Sorvino to get his reaction, he said, "Good for him if he goes [to jail], because if not, he has to meet me. And I will kill the motherf--ker, real simple."
The busy character actor and Chicago Hope star played Captain Prince, the embattled head of the Verona Beach police with a blood feud problem on his hands.
His work on TV since has included ER, The Sopranos, Soul Food, Daredevil, Rosewood, For the People and Evil, and he just appeared in the 2021 films The Night House and Blue Bayou.
Curtis-Hall has been married to actress and filmmaker Kasi Lemmons since 1995 and they have two children together.
Before he became everyone's favorite (though ultimately doomed) horror film geek in the Scream franchise, Kennedy was the pink-haired Sampson, waving his gun for House Montague.
Kennedy's late '90s were pretty stacked, following Scream 2 with Enemy of the State, Bowfinger, Three Kings and Boiler Room. He's also known for The Jamie Kennedy Project, co-starring on Ghost Whisperer and lending his voice to The Cleveland Show, among his many TV and indie film credits.
The future Bring It On and Swimfan heartthrob played Montague ally Balthasar—at 17, he was one of the stars closer in age to the rambunctious teens Shakespeare had in mind.
In addition to the aforementioned YA favorites, Bradford moved on to The West Wing, Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, Oliver Stone's W and numerous other credits, including NCIS, Shooter and, most recently, the reboot of Magnum P.I.
When Romeo + Juliet came out, DiCaprio admitted that he didn't know how the concept—Elizabethan language in a hyper-modern setting—would be received, no matter how timeless the material.
But "I have to say," he told i-D in 1997, "the first time I knew it was working was the first day of work. It actually seemed more natural, more 'meant to be' than a traditional version."
"Even though it's a fantasy world," he explained, "it has a lot of modern references in it, especially with the violence and gang warfare, so it made me feel a lot closer to home. I think Shakespeare probably would have wanted his work to live on through the years, become a timeless piece that could adapt to the future."
And of playing Romeo, DiCaprio said, "It was interesting once I really started to research him, because you have this pre-planned idea of what Romeo's supposed to be, just some fluffy romantic type of guy, but then you sort of realize that he was a hopeless romantic, and then he meets Juliet. And Juliet says, 'Alright look, if you've got any real balls you should marry me now and risk everything.'
"So he risks everything—his whole life, his whole family, everything—and he marries this girl, which is such an honorable thing to do if you really believe in somebody, if you believe in love like that, especially at that age, especially to risk your life. It's the ultimate tragedy and the ultimate love story."