Behind-The-Scenes Stories About 'Excalibur'

Helen Mirren and Liam Neeson met on the set of Excalibur. For Neeson, it was love at first sight, he recalled during a 2018 interview on The Graham Norton Show:

I remember being on the set and standing with Ciarán Hinds as Helen walked towards us dressed in her full Morgana le Fay costume and we both went, “Oh f***.”

The couple went on to date for four years. “We were not meant to be together, but we loved each other very, very much,” Mirren said. 

Neeson married Natasha Richardson in 1994. Mirren wed director Taylor Hackford in 1997. Both Mirren and Neeson speak fondly of each other and have remained friends over the years. 

Excalibur features an A-list of future Hollywood stars, including Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Helen Mirren, and Nicol Williamson. The only main cast member with a big film under his belt at the time of filming was Nigel Terry, who played Arthur and had starred in 1968's The Lion in the Winter. 

Boorman apparently wanted to focus on retelling the legend of Arthur, not on an actor's star power. 

Director John Boorman cast his daughter Katrine to play Igrayne, who has two nude sex scenes in the movie with two different men (played by Gabriel Byrne and Corin Redgrave.) In one of the scenes, Uther (Byrne) uses a spell to trick Igrayne into believing that he is her husband. He then rips off her top, exposing her chest. 

Despite her young age, Katrine was not uncomfortable filming the R-rated scenes in front of her father. She said in the Excalibur: Behind the Movie documentary:

I[t] wasn’t that awkward for me, weirdly. I think it was very uncomfortable and awkward for Corin Redgrave and Gabriel Byrne. They had to rip off the clothing off a 17-year-girl who’s the director’s daughter… but once you’ve been shagged by a knight in armor, watched by your father, there’s absolutely no looking back.

John Boorman cast his daughter Katrine Boorman to play Arthur's mother, Igrayne. The actress had two graphic sex scenes in the movie, one with Gabriel Byrne and the other with Corin Redgrave. 

Filming a sex scene with the director's daughter was probably pretty awkward, but getting intimate with a pillow for an hour in front of the whole crew, Byrne said, might have been worse:

We did it once in front of the fire, then they took Katrine and sent her home. And I said, "Where’s she going?" [They said,]"Oh, well, it’s just you now doing close-up." So they stuck in this pink cushion and I had to hump this cushion for an hour with the sweat rolling off me.

Director John Boorman has used elements from the Bible to tell stories in many of his films. “I've always been absolutely obsessed with the whole Grail story,” he said, "and I've used the iconography and also the structures - the 'quest' structures particularly - in the various films I've done. The whole legend kept impinging on me.”

Biblical symbolism is used all over Excalibur to depict the transition from old religion to magic, Boorman explained:

At the stage in Merlin's life that we depict in Excalibur, we are suggesting that he's really beginning to fade out. He's drifting in and out of the affairs of men. He functions better at some times than at others… [H]e says to Morgana: “Our time is passing and the time of man is coming. The one God is driving out the many gods.” And that's what my story is about: the coming of Christian man and the dis­appearence of the old religions which are represented by Merlin. The forces of su­perstition and magic are swallowed up into the unconscious.

John Boorman's son Charley, who played young Mordred in Excalibur, was 14 years old at the time of the movie's release. Robert Addie played the adult Mordred, who turns out to be one of the movie's villains.

Charley continued to act in a few more films, and met Ewan McGregor on the set of The Serpent's Kiss in 1997. They became friends and went on to make three documentary series about their long-distance motorcycle journeys: Long Way Round (2004), Long Way Down (2007), and Long Way Up (2020).

Charley discussed riding with McGregor during Long Way Up, in which the pair travel through 13 different countries on electric motorcycles:

Ewan is a wonderful person to travel with, and we’ve been friends for ever such a long time. The opportunity to jump on bikes again and do what we love was such a great thing. Getting on the back of a motorcycle is something really special, and when you get out and ride, you can often forget about everything that's going on and just think about the moment you're in.