Although the movie starts out portraying the traditional Elizabethan style of acting on the stage (ie, stylized non-realistic acting), by the end of the movie, sequences on the stage are being performed in the style of realism (ie, what most people think of as modern acting), which was a style of acting not introduced until the 20th century.

Claire Danes and Billy Crudup became a couple after the filming of this movie. Crudup left his long-time girlfriend Mary-Louise Parker for Danes.

Kate Winslet was originally offered the female lead but she pulled out shortly before filming started.

While the movie does not claim strict historical accuracy, it features many characters based on actual personalities from the seventeenth-century stage. Ned Kynaston did play female roles, but also played male roles before and after women were allowed on stage. He would have been 20 in 1660, when the first woman appeared on stage. Margaret Hughes (Maria) is supposed to have been the first woman to appear in a stage production, aged 30. She did appear as Desdemona in Othello, on December 8 at the theater on Vere Street operated by the King's Company, whose manager was Thomas Killigrew, not Thomas Betterton as the film shows. Betterton was a successful theater manager later, but was only 25 in 1660. Other characters also were not historically the age that they appear to be in the film - Nell Gwynn would have been 10.

The full title of the stage play behind this movie is Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which was reportedly the advertising poster slogan for Kynaston's female impersonations.