Trivia

Anthony says his date of birth, December 31, 1937; this is Sir Anthony Hopkins' actual date of birth.

Sir Anthony Hopkins portrayed a character, Anthony, who had the same first name as his own. The main character's name is Anthony because the role was written for Hopkins. The director claimed it was a dream come true when he accepted. This is an adaptation of an existing play, so the role can not have been written for Anthony Hopkins.

Florian Zeller shared one contribution that Sir Anthony Hopkins made to the film: an aria from the Georges Bizet opera The Pearl Fishers: "That was something that came from our conversation. He loves music; so do I. One day he told me, 'One of my favorite pieces of music is this aria,' and he told me this story: When he was 30 years old, he was doing a play in the UK. and one night he heard that music for the very first time. He came back to the hotel where there was a piano and he started to try to find the melody. He drove everyone crazy, because it took him something like three days to find the melody. He told me, 'I have always dreamt of making a movie with this music in it.'" Concluded Zeller, "So I tried to fulfill his dreams as he fulfilled mine."

Writer/director Florian Zeller is a playwright from France, who adapted his acclaimed play Le Père from 2012 into this film, which became his feature film directorial debut.

With his win for this film, Sir Anthony Hopkins became the first person to publicly be on the autism spectrum to win an Oscar. Although Hopkins had previously won an Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), he had not yet been diagnosed with Asperger's, much less revealed the diagnosis publicly.

Florian Zeller brought on Sir Christopher Hampton to adapt the play to film and to translate it into English. Hampton, like Zeller, is a playwright himself, but has since also become known as a screenwriter on films such as Atonement (2007), The Quiet American (2002), and Dangerous Liaisons (1988). In the case of the last film, it was based on Hampton's own stage play that was in turn based on a 1782 novel.

The role of the father has been played on stage by Frank Langella, making this the second of his stage roles to be played on film by Sir Anthony Hopkins. They previously both played Richard Nixon. Hopkins played the part in Nixon (1995), Langella in Frost/Nixon (2008). Interestingly, they've both played Don Diego De La Vega in separate Zorro films.

The location of Anthony's flat in the film is in a building on the junction of Lauderdale Road and Elgin Road in London's Maida Vale.

The film was made and first released about eight years after its source French play ''Le Père'' by Florian Zeller had been first performed in 2012. Zeller also penned the screenplay for this picture.

This is the second adaptation of Florian Zeller's play. It was previously filmed as Florida (2015) five years earlier.

Premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival before the world went into shutdown for Covid-19 global pandemic.

A relationship between Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton already existed as the latter had previously translated Zeller's plays into English.

Olivia Colman plays another daughter of a parent suffering from dementia in "The Iron Lady."

Sir Christopher Hampton also penned another adaptation with Sir Anthony Hopkins and with "Father" in the title early in 1985 with Mike Newell's The Good Father (1985), from the novel by Peter Prince.

In order to better convey the experience of fading memory to the audience for the original stage play "Le Père," as the drama progressed, items such as furniture would gradually be removed from the stage until, by the end of the play, the setting would be essentially bare, but for the actors. For the film adaptation, Anthony's flat, his daughter Anne's flat, and the residential care home he ultimately occupies, all play out in the very same space within permanent architecture. As a means of immersing the viewer in Anthony's failing mind, production designer Peter Francis made subtle ongoing alterations to the color schemes throughout, gradually switching familiar day-to-day objects in this space, so that as the story moves forward the viewer becomes almost as uncertain of his/her surroundings as Anthony himself. Different pictures were hung in similar arrangements on the walls over the course of the film, further adding to the visual confusion of Anthony's (and our) space.