Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow months before Conran made the movie with his actors, he shot it entirely with stand-ins in Los Angeles and then created the whole movie in animatics so that the actors had an idea of what the film would look like and where to move on the soundstage. To prepare for the film, Conran had his cast watch old movies, such as Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not" (1944) for Paltrow's performance and "The Thin Man" (1934) for the relationship between Nick and Nora that was to be echoed in the one between Joe and Polly. Avnet constantly pushed
Lauren Bacall in "Misery", which starred Kathy Bates and James Caan. In 1997, Bacall was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996), her first nomination after a career span of more than fifty years. Bacall had already won a Golden Globe and was widely expected to win the Oscar, but lost in an upset to Juliette Binoche for "The English Patient". Bacall received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997, and in 1999, she was voted one of the 25 most significant female movie stars in history by the American Film Institute.