Cold Mountain

 The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic."

In 1997, United Artists bought the rights to "Cold Mountain" for Anthony Minghella to write and direct, with Sydney Pollack as producer. As the script was developed, the scope of the film grew from a period love story with a budget of $40 million into an expensive epic. The budget grew to nearly $120 million, with Minghella having trouble finding American landscapes that could pass for 19th-century towns. Tom Cruise, at the time married to Nicole Kidman, wanted to play Inman, but the studio did not want to pay his $20 million demand. When Cruise backed out, Kidman immediately signed up. Kidman revealed in 2011 that she first met with Minghella in the 1990s to discuss a possible role in his movie "The English Patient" (1996), but was eventually turned down.

While Cold Mountain, where the film is set, is a real mountain located within the Pisgah National Forest, Haywood County, North Carolina, the film was shot mostly in Romania, with numerous scenes filmed in Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The film was one of an increasing number of Hollywood productions made in eastern Europe as a result of lower costs in the region; and because, in this instance, Transylvania having fewer infrastructure like power cables and paved roads was less marked by modern life than the Appalachians.

Kidman was asked to lose as much weight as possible for the 2003 film. She went on the hard-boiled egg diet, which entailed having one egg for breakfast and two to three for dinner. This type of diet is not advisable in the long run, as it is unbalanced, unhealthful, and does not provide one with enough calories. In the end, she ended up losing more weight than she originally desired. Conversely, co-star Jude Law had to gain twenty-two pounds of muscle for his role on-location in Romania. As there wasn't any regular fitness equipment around, he did so by carrying his personal trainer around on his back, dragging logs, and pushing a tennis-court roller.

Kidman used an old converted bus once owned by executed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu as her on-location dressing room.