Dame Emma Thompson received a total of thirteen nominations for her role in this movie. She won in all of those events, which includes an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA as Best Actress.
The country house used as the location for Howards End is over twice as large as seen from the front and partial side views used in this movie. It is H-shaped with a large back portion, into which its owners moved during filming, while the front portion was emptied and refinished. (The landscaping also was redone, with flowers and plants truer to the story's period.) The house is owned by friends of production designer Luciana Arrighi, and while she was a houseguest there, it occurred to her it would make a good stand-in for Howards End.
This movie was part of a mid-1980s to early 1990s cycle of mostly theatrical movie adaptations of works by E.M. Forster. The others being Passaggio in India (1984), Camera con vista (1985), Maurice (1987), and Monteriano - Dove gli angeli non osano metter piede (1991).
Sir Anthony Hopkins was the first actor cast for this movie. In an interview with the producers on the Merchant Ivory Collection DVD, director James Ivory says that he passed a copy of the script to Hopkins via his friend, a sound editor on Il silenzio degli innocenti (1991), "Thereby bypassing all of the agents all over the place." Hopkins read the script and told Ivory he was very interested in taking the role.