Tim Roth cannot, in fact, play the piano. He trained for six months just to be able to "fake it" for the film.
Exterior shots of the ship are the inspired blueprints of the SS Lusitania and her sister ship the SS Mauritania. The ballroom in which 1900 plays his piano in had a dome similar to the dome the SS Mauritania had in her ballroom during the transatlantic period.
It was Tornatore's first English-language film.
There was actually a registered ship named the SS Virginian which was built in 1904 and scrapped around 1954. The ship had one funnel with the Allan Line's colors on it. The SS Virginian also had a vital part in the Titanic disaster in April 1912 as she was reported near the vicinity of the sinking and within radio contact.
The film underwent a 4K restoration by Medusa Film at the Istituto Luce - Cinecittà laboratories from the original 35mm picture negative and the original 5.1-channel Dolby Digital magneto-optical disc. The work was supervised by director Giuseppe Tornatore with the color grading supervised by Pasquale Cuzzupoli. The restoration of the shorter international cut of the film premiered as a wide release in China on 15 November 2019, where it was a surprise success, surpassing both local and American blockbusters.