Oliver! (film) in the United States, and Oliver Reed, who played Bill Sikes, had just begun to make a name for himself. Producer John Woolf suggested Oliver Reed for the role to the director Reed, without knowing that the two were in fact related. Ron Moody, who was also well known in Britain but not the US, recreated his London stage performance, after Peter Sellers, Dick Van Dyke and Peter O'Toole reportedly turned down the role. Elizabeth Taylor turned down the role of Nancy as well. Julie Andrews was also considered. Director Reed also had Shirley Bassey in mind, but his choice
Oliver Sykes inspired by the first album of the band "Count Your Blessings". The movie was released in France in 2017 with Kévin Azaïs, Monia Chokri and Nathan Willcocks as main actors. Since the age of 12, Sykes has suffered from a form of night terrors known as sleep paralysis, which is the inability to move during sleep. Sykes became a vegetarian in 2003 after watching a documentary about animal cruelty online, "When I saw how animals are tortured on factory farms, I couldn't justify being a part of that cruelty." He went on to become one of the faces for PETA,