Jessica Lange was pregnant during principal photography. Lange gave birth to her second child at age 36, a daughter Hannah Jane Shepard on 13th January 1986. The child's father is her then partner and co-star in this film, Sam Shepard.
The film's source Beth Henley stage-play "Crimes of the Heart" won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1981.
Actors Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange since 1982 had been in a long-term relationship when the movie was made and released with the pairing lasting until 2009.
The film is cast with three leads who have all won Oscars in the Best Actress Academy Award category: Diane Keaton for Io e Annie (1977), Sissy Spacek for La ragazza di Nashville (1980) and, Jessica Lange for Blue Sky (1994), with the latter's Best Actress Oscar won after this movie, but at the time that this movie was made and released, Lange had previously won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar Academy Award for Tootsie (1982), making this movie's three leads still all Academy Award Winners at the time the film was made and first released.
The original Broadway production of "Crimes of the Heart" by Beth Henley opened at the John Golden Theater in New York on 4th November 1981, after 13 previews starting on 23rd October the previous month, and ran for 535 performances, until the play closed on 13th February 1983. The play was nominated for four Tony Awards in 1982 including Best Play. Henley also wrote the screen play for this movie.