It was the film that turned Leonardo DiCaprio into the ultimate 90s pin-up, gave Swedish indie-pop outfit The Cardigans their much-deserved UK breakthrough and had even the biggest Shakespeare-phobes suddenly quoting the Bard verbatim.
It’s also one of the definitive films of the 90s, turning a 400-year-old romance into a classic Generation X flick.
20 years to the day that it first premiered in the States, here are 20 things you may not know about Baz Luhrmann’s audacious retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
Natalie Portman was originally cast as Juliet