About the production

As part of the rehearsal process for Mona Lisa Smile, the cast spent several weeks learning the etiquette, elocution and dance styles of the early 1950s. Producers Goldsmith-Thomas, Schindler and Paul Schiff hired etiquette expert Lily Lodge to train the actors to carry themselves as women did half a century ago.

"We had to learn things like when you shake hands, how to light a cigarette properly, how to cross and uncross your legs, what silverware to use at the dinner table," explains Ginnifer Goodwin, "stuff I'd never thought of before."

"It was impressive," smiles Julia Stiles, who took time out of her studies at Columbia University to appear in Mona Lisa Smile. "I started the rehearsal period saying to my mother, I don't know how they're going to do this because I'm such a tomboy," Stiles continues. "But now I know how to sit like a proper young lady."

Yvonne Marceau provided the young women with tango, waltz, swing and rumba lessons, which proved to be quite a valuable learning experience in terms of the characters the young women were playing. "Ballroom dancing is so dependent on the guy, because he leads," explains Stiles. "When we started the lessons we behaved like very modern girls and tried to push the guys around and lead them. Finally, we had to remember that they were supposed to lead us and we had to be much less aggressive. That turned out to be very applicable to the time period and our characters."

The lessons also helped the actors bond. "I was pretty intimidated at first about working with Julia Roberts," laughs Dominic West, who plays a fellow teacher at Wellesley. "But once you've danced a few fox trots with her, then it's a lot easier."

In fact, Roberts instilled a tremendous sense of camaraderie in the cast and crew throughout the filmmaking process. "Julia became such a natural teacher, leader and big sister to these young actors," says producer Paul Schiff. "She provided that leadership with tenderness, grace and charm, and did it in such an open way. She invited everyone in so that it really became an ensemble."

Like the character of Katherine, Roberts proved to be an inspiration for the young actresses working with her for the first time. "I never pretended I wasn't working with Julia Roberts," says Gyllenhaal. "I was fascinated by her, the way she moved, the way she walked, the way she connected with people. She's a focused, clear, strong woman, which is key to her appeal around the world. At the same time, there's a vulnerability. She can get so emotional that you think she could crack at any moment. That's why her characters seem like real people, women who are strong, complicated, overwhelming and sometimes overwhelmed."

"I'm floored at what a good actress she is," adds Stiles. "I've been watching her very closely take after take and every time she does everything with a new slant so that it seems like she's doing it for the first time."

Roberts' inclusiveness proved to be essential for Dunst, whose character's antagonistic behavior distances her from the other characters. "You sometimes take on the feelings of the character you're playing and I would get really sad at times," explains Dunst. "Everyone was so communal and I was on the outside of it all. But Julia was such a doll. She would hang around out on the set even when she wasn't working and just come up and give me a hug sometimes."

The inspiration that Roberts engendered in her fellow actors aptly paralleled that of her character's effect on her students. "In general, I'd say this movie is about people who affect each other's lives," says Thomas. "Specifically, it's about one woman who changes the lives of her students and is changed by them. When Bill Dunbar says, "You think you came to Wellesley to help the girls find their way. I think you came to help the girls find your way," Katherine realizes her own hypocrisy. Just as the institution has no right to tell the girls how to live, neither does she. In the end, this movie is about finding and living your own truth."

Capturing The Era

In the 21st century, Wellesley College is still dedicated to educating women and was very welcoming to the cast and crew of Mona Lisa Smile. "They loved the script," Schiff points out, "and they appreciated that it depicted a specific time and place, and that the Wellesley of Mona Lisa Smile is not the Wellesley of today."

While much of the campus has remained unchanged since the 1950s, the student body has not. "Wellesley was a very white place in the 50s," screenwriter Rosenthal points out. "And it has made great strides at diversity."

The filmmakers were given ample access to Wellesley's archives and allowed to shoot on the picturesque Massachusetts campus, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect responsible for New York's Central Park.

"You walk onto this campus and it's almost like an advertisement for the perfect college," says Roberts. "It's a pretty remarkable environment."

The film began principal photography at Wellesley in early fall. Filming was limited to six days in order not to disrupt campus life. Central locations at Wellesley included Tower Court, Severance Green, Founders and Houghton Memorial Chapel.

During his time off from filming at Wellesley, Dominic West sat in on some language classes and did some extra-curricular research for his role. "They had a bar on campus and I was pretty much the only man there," he recalls. "The girls were incredibly bright and interesting. They escorted me around and looked after me. I learned a lot from them."

One actor who was well versed in Wellesley's traditions was Laura Allen, who plays Susan Delacorte, a close friend of Betty's. A recent graduate of Wellesley, Allen reveled in recreating some of the traditions that the school still holds dear. "The women who attend Wellesley have such pride about the college, and in the women who proceeded them that they carry on traditions," Allen says. "Some of those traditions include hoop rolling. Originally, the winner of the hoop rolling race (which is recreated in Mona Lisa Smile) was said to be the first to marry. That changed in the 1980s. The winner was deemed to become the first CEO of a major corporation. Today she is said to be the first to realize her dreams -- whatever they may be."

The responsibility of recreating the Wellesley of 1953 was primarily the responsibility of production designer Jane Musky. "Jane is just a genius, she's incredibly detail-oriented," says Goldsmith-Thomas, who previously worked with her on Maid in Manhattan.

In her search for the best locations, Musky cast a wide net and recommended a diverse range of spots in and around the New York area. "What's great about shooting a period piece in New York is that there are more choices than if you just went to Wellesley and were married to Boston for all of your interiors and college scenes," she says.

Musky also preferred to film on location rather than building sets in a studio. "What I like about locations for period films is that they bring it down a notch," Musky explains, "so everything isn't so crisp and clean. It feels more real, more lived in."

While visiting Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the their research, the filmmakers discovered a grand stairway in the university's art gallery, which later became the location for Katherine and Bill's first meeting at Wellesley. The film also shot at Yale's Sterling Memorial Library and Silliman College, which ironically stood in for the university's longtime rival, Harvard.

Other college locations included New York's Columbia University, where a lecture room in Havemeyer Hall served as Katherine's classroom, and the nearby Union Theological Seminary, where a neo-Gothic space served as the practice room for Ginnifer Goodwin's cello playing.

Tarrytown, New York, stood in for the village of Wellesley because the original town had become much too contemporary. "Tarrytown hadn't changed that much," says Musky. "An intimate, village quality still existed."

The production also shot inside Tarrytown's Set Back Inn, which became the story's Blue Ship Inn where Katherine bonds with Bill while escaping the lectures on how to be a proper wife, which are given by Nancy, Katherine's housemate and etiquette teacher, played by Marcia Gay Harden.

Nancy's home was filmed at a Victorian house on Shonnard Terrace in Yonkers, New York. Musky and her team transformed the bottom part of the house into Nancy's idea of perfection -- chintz and more chintz. "What's funny about Nancy's house is that when you read the script, it says she loves chintz and pattern, so every room is just covered with pattern and chintz," says Musky. It was one of the hardest exercises I ever had in filmmaking. I had to go through hundreds of fabrics for weeks and try to make some visual sense of it all."

For a production designer, such challenges are not atypical in a detailed period film. Musky pored through the Wellesley archives. She and her team visited other women's colleges and made use of books and advertisements from the period of the early 50s.

"The costumes in this movie are a metaphor for the story," asserts Thomas. "The foundations and the corsets dictate the feminine ideal that defined the 1950s."

With that in mind, costume designer Michael Dennison did extensive research into the period. In addition to about 350 costumes for the principal actors, Dennison also had to dress approximately 7,000 extras over the course of the film.

"What's different about a period movie, very specifically a period movie from the 40s and 50s, is that everyone is dressed from the skin out," Dennison explains. "All the ladies had to wear the real foundation of the period or else they wouldn't look the way they do."

Even young women of the time wore girdles or waist cinches to create an hourglass figure, which was considered the ideal. Dennison recalls telling the actors, "You're going to hate me. You're going to be uncomfortable. But at the same time, you're going to feel it. The clothes will continue to remind you who you are and where you are."

For Roberts' character, Dennison's research took him to California to study the fashion styles in progressive towns like Berkeley and Long Beach -- the areas from which Katherine originates. "A lot of free thinkers were hanging out there," he relates. "The peasant blouses Katherine wears, for example, were just coming into fashion in 1953. "Katherine was ahead of her time in some instances, with very eclectic taste. She gleans her style knowledge from the fact that she has such an incredible overview of culture and art."

Among Dennison's more notable creations was a bridal gown for Kirsten Dunst's Betty, which was based on photos of such famous events from the period as the weddings of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Grace Kelly.

Mixing vintage clothing with his own creations, Dennison's costumes spanned the weather changes that transpired over almost an entire school year. The film begins with the fall ceremony marking the beginning of the school year, in which the students wear the traditional white blazers and beanies of their particular class, through the winter and into spring graduation.

"With the palate that he created for the various scenes and seasons, Michael did an amazing job," says Schindler. "His designs created texture and added dimension to the film."