Trivia

In an effort for Tom Cruise to look more “teenage” in appearance, the producers of Risky Business put him though an unusual bit of physical training. Cruise worked out 7 days a week in order to lose ten pounds. Once that had been accomplished, he immediately ceased working out and ate extremely fatty foods in order to add a layer of baby fat. This is how he achieved that “fresh-faced” teenage look.

Among the actors who auditioned for the role of Joel were Tom Hanks and Nicolas Cage.

At Joel’s brothel party the song “Swamp” by the Talking Heads plays in the background – one line of the song contains the phrase “Risky Business”.

Tangerine Dream based parts of the film’s score on material from their previous albums, particularly the album “Force Majeure”: The title track is the basis for Lana’s theme, and the intro to “Cloudburst Flight” was reused for “Guido the Killer Pimp”. “No Future (Get off the Babysitter)” is based on the title track to the album “Exit”.

Timothy Hutton was the first choice for the role of Joel, but turned it down.

This is Curtis Armstrong’s first movie.

Cameo: ['Sean Penn' ] as the man sitting in the passenger seat as Joel first takes the Porsche for a spin. The cameo was a favor for director Paul Brickman.

The dance scene where Joel dances to “Old Time Rock N’ Roll” was completely improvised. In the script Tom Cruise was simply instructed to “dance to rock music”.

Writer/Director Paul Brickman had a completely different ending for the film with a rather pessimistic tone, with Joel being denied admission to Princeton and he and Lana sitting on the roof of a building overlooking the city pondering his future and hers, and for once Lana lets her guard down. The studio however, wanted a “feel good” ending, because this was the popular theme of teen movies at the time, so both versions were shot and shown to a test audience and it was agreed that their preference would be the ending for the film.