During a break in filming at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire (where Russell Crowe's character watches his son play rugby union), one of the extras asked Russell Crowe for some acting advice. After their conversation, Crowe remembered the student's serious interest in acting and sent him autographed posters and photos from his film, Gladiador (2000), and wrote a letter saying, "A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step." The extra, Henry Cavill, went on to pursue his acting career and ultimately landed the role of Superman in O Homem de Aço (2013), with Crowe playing his father.
Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan became romantically involved during filming. Ryan and her husband, Dennis Quaid, divorced the next year.
Most shoots encounter difficulty of some sort but the filming of Prova de Vida (2000) was beset with them. They suffered frequent hailstorms, mudslides destroyed the roads to locations, 23 members of the crew came down with a case of severe altitude sickness, two volcanic eruptions and, at one point, tear gas wafting onto the set from a nearby riot.
Terry (Russell Crowe) mentions being in the Special Air Service Regiment in Australia, then leaving to join the British SAS because of a lack of action. Post-Vietnam in Australia, operational deployments were highly limited, and often soldiers went entire careers without being deployed on operations. The British armed forces had more involvement internationally. This has since changed for Australia since the late 1990s.
Originally it was planned that all extras were to receive the normal pay used for American extras. But the Ecuadorian government, which could not afford to have their actors paid that well, demanded that the production pay Ecuadorian salaries.