Trivia: The wonderful soundtrack to this movie topped the US Billboard charts and won the academy award too.
Trivia: All the actors were fluent in English and dubbed themselves in the English version.
Trivia: Australian playwright David Williamson makes a cameo as the tall player in the opposing team in the football match held near the Pyramids in Egypt.
Trivia: Teddy Lewis tells Ned that "Matty" had him show her how to rig up a explosive with a delay to a door. So in theory Matty could have opened the door and escaped unscathed.
Trivia: During the rosebush/tree chopping scene, Faye Dunaway is chopping the tree, except when you see the close up. During the close up (when the tree falls), it is actually the films director Frank Perry chopping the tree.
Trivia: Producer/screenwriter/director John Boorman deliberately chose renowned stage actors Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren to play the sorcerer Merlin and the sorceress Morgana, knowing very well that Williamson and Mirren hated each other in real life (because of a disastrous stage production of Macbeth they worked on, years earlier). Boorman anticipated real friction, tension and anger between the two actors, which was the effect he wanted onscreen. On the contrary, the experience of working together in "Excalibur" completely changed Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren into the best of friends.
Trivia: On the advice of his doctor, James Cagney came out of retirement after 20 years to appear in Ragtime, his last theatrical film. He traveled to London for the shooting by ship (he hated planes), and because diabetes confined him to a wheel chair, a double (shot from behind) performed all the scenes of him standing or walking. While the epithet "ni**er" is uttered by several white characters throughout the movie, Cagney refused to use it, so for his lines, the less offensive word "buck" was substituted.
Trivia: Henry Fonda won the Best Actor Academy Award for his role of Norman Thayer. At the age of 76, Fonda became the oldest winner in the Best Actor category in Academy history (his record was broken in 2021 by Anthony Hopkins, who won at 83).
Trivia: Maureen Stapleton won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Emma Goldman, even though she only has nine minutes of screen time.