In January 1996, three years after this movie was released, a four-year-old boy from Seattle actually was chosen as the reincarnation of beloved Lama Deschund Rinpochet, and relocated to Nepal, to be groomed as a spiritual teacher.
For the scene in the forest with the ascetics, where Siddartha becomes emaciated from lack of food, Keanu Reeves went on a crash diet of oranges and water.
Final film in director Bernardo Bertolucci's "oriental trilogy", following लास्ट एम्परर (1987) and The Sheltering Sky (1990).
The film is dedicated to Francis Bouygues, a French industrialist who was to produce this film before he died in 1993.