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The cast of Little Miss Sunshine is reflecting on the 2006 road trip comedy — and the loose safety protocols that went into filming the indie hit.
At Sundance earlier this year, actors Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin spoke with People about the 20th anniversary of the film, which also starred Steve Carell and the late Alan Arkin, and reminisced on shooting scenes as a fictional family in a beat-up van.
While speaking about rehearsals for the movie, 63-year-old Kinnear told the outlet in the article published Sunday, “This is before we even got on the road and started shooting the movie, which is the most dangerous movie ever made because maybe there was one follow car somewhere.”
He added that every scene filmed in the van involved him actually driving, while the film’s directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris “contorted” in the car “with a headset listening.”
“I like the idea that this was the most dangerous film ever made,” joked Breslin, who was 10 years old when she starred in the movie. Kinnear added, “No children were damaged in the making of this movie.”
The cast of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ said filming the movie was dangerous because of their antics on the road
Nowadays, professional films usually shoot driving scenes by towing a car or mounting it on a platform driven by another person in order to keep actors safe.
In another risky situation on set, Dano revealed that Kinnear also broke a traffic law during rehearsals for the sake of pulling a prank on Arkin.
“I remember the second the van took off from the production office — with Greg driving — Alan said, ‘I have to pee,’” Dano, 42, recalled, according to People. “And Greg refused to pull over. It was a bit.”
Dano added that Kinnear drove through “a full red light,” he said, or “close to a red light if not one. You didn’t want to give Alan the chance to get out of the van to go, and so you blew right through it.”
The cast of 2006 hit ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ reunited at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival (Getty)
Kinnear previously opened up about the risks on the set of Little Miss Sunshine during a 2022 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
“You can count every Michael Bay movie ever made, this is the most dangerous film ever made,” he joked on the talk show, referring to the iconic action movie director.
“Nobody was wearing seatbelts,” Kinnear said. He added that they “didn’t have clearance on the highway” to drive with “billions of dollars of cargo,” jokingly referencing his co-stars.
He quipped: “Nobody is making this movie anymore!”