Mandy Patinkin has said that the role of Inigo Montoya in "The Princess Bride" (1987) is his personal favourite over the course of his entire career. Patinkin claims that the only injury he sustained during the entire filming of this movie was a bruised rib due to stifling his laughter in his scenes with Billy Crystal. His attempt at holding back his laughter is obvious from his facial expression during his line,
"This is noble, sir."
Patinkin and co-star Cary Elwes performed all of their own sword-fighting after many hours of training. According to director Rob Reiner, the only stunt performed by Elwes' stunt double was one flip during the "Chatty Duelists" scene. The pair Cary trained for months with Peter Diamond and Bob Anderson, who between them had been in the Olympics; worked on films from the "Lord of the Rings' trilogy to the "Star Wars" films; and coached Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster. Every spare moment on set was spent practicing. Eventually, when they showed Reiner the swordfight for the movie, he was underwhelmed and requested that it be at least three minutes long rather than the current one minute. They added steps to the set, watched more swashbuckling movies for inspiration, re-choreographed the scene, and ended up with a three minute and 10 second fight which took the better part of a week to film from all angles.
Patinkin says that the line that introduces this post gets quoted back to him by at least two or three strangers every day of his life. Patinkin told the interviewer that he loves hearing the line and he also loves the general fact that he got to be in the movie, stating, "I'm frankly thrilled about it. I can't believe that I got to be in 'The Wizard of Oz,' you know what I mean?" (IMDb)
Happy Birthday, Mandy Patinkin!
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