Hayden Christensen, who trained extensively in ballet as a child, was first choice to star; however a persistent ankle injury prevented him from being able to perform to the standards demanded by Ralph Fiennes.
Ralph Fiennes originally did not want to be in the movie, knowing from experience how difficult it could be to both direct and act. But as he tried to get financing for the film he kept being asked if he was going to be in it, and when he said no, "I could see the light fading behind their eyes," because there were no other major names in it, "so finally I folded."
In a Q & A event after the screening of the film Ralph Fiennes (who plays the character of Aleksandr Ivanovich Pushkin) mentions that Mikhail Baryshnikov, who had been taught by the real Aleksandr Ivanovich Pushkin, was very generous in sharing his memories of him and that this had been very helpful in creating the character.
Apart from the French ballet terms used during dancing instructions, Ralph Fiennes's entire dialogue in the film is in Russian.
When interviewed in 1961 about why he wanted to flee Russia, Rudolf Nureyev said, "it is a life of bullying, for the artist as for everyone else, but most of all for the artist. When I was a student at ballet school, I was told what to think, what to read, how to spend my spare time, and who could be my friends. . . . Private life in the Soviet Union is impossible."