For the fight scene in the bicycle shop, the producers had to call in Jackie Chan's stunt team because none of the stuntmen wanted to do the scene with Michelle Yeoh due to her full contact stunt fighting style, which she perfected in Hong Kong action films.
Sir Anthony Hopkins was cast as Elliot Carver, and joined the production, but walked after three days because it was so chaotic, and there was no completed shooting script; due to the pressure on EON Productions to finish the movie on time, new pages of the screenplay were being delivered every morning. He opted to appear in A Máscara do Zorro (1998) instead.
Just before shooting the scene where James Bond and Wai Lin get on the motorcycle, director Roger Spottiswoode took Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh aside, each without the other's knowledge, and told each of them not to let the other get in the driver's seat. The result is in the final movie: Bond and Wai Lin fight over who gets to drive before getting on the bike.
When they had to re-shoot the car park scene, it was too expensive to go back to Germany, so it was done at Brent Cross shopping center in London. Posters around the stores told shoppers that the explosions were nothing to worry about. It took ten days to shoot this car park scene, and seventeen BMWs were used.
This movie made particularly heavy use of gadgetry, because some fans thought there was too little of it in 007 Contra GoldenEye (1995).
Daphne Deckers: The wife of the Wimbledon 1996 winner Richard Krajicek as Elliot Carver's public relations lady. Reportedly, she wanted to audition for the role of Paris Carver. Being too late for this, the production wrote in this small cameo role for her.
Michael G. Wilson: Tom Wallace, one of Elliot Carver's subordinates on a television screen, when Elliot Carver discusses his new story.