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Little Miss Sunshine may have taken the world by storm 20 years ago, but Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin remember it like it was yesterday.
At the Sundance Film Festival, where the little indie that could first premiered in 2006, the four actors reunited to reminisce and host a special anniversary screening on Jan. 28 in Park City, Utah. At a dinner the night prior, Kinnear tells PEOPLE, they celebrated a special costar: Alan Arkin, who died in June 2023.
“We were all toasting, last night, the great Alan Arkin and how much he’s missed,” the actor, 62, says. “But this is a pretty great, to get the squad together… Quick shout out to Steve [Carell] who should be here!”
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Little Miss Sunshine, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and written by Michael Arndt, became one of the biggest distributing deals out of the Sundance Film Festival following its Jan. 20, 2006 premiere there. Dano, 41, says he remembers the audience applauding mid-movie at that screening: “I had never seen a movie where the audience claps during it like a Broadway musical, a big number. That was a distinct Sundance memory for me.”
After a July release that year, Little Miss Sunshine became a critical and commercial success, earning four Oscar nominations in 2007 including in the Best Picture category. Also among those nods were Breslin, now 29, who was nine while filming, and Arkin, who ended up winning the Supporting Actor prize.
Asked for a favorite memory of working with Arkin, the quartet picks a prank Kinnear played on his costar during rehearsal. “I remember the second the van took off from the production office — with Greg driving — Alan said, ‘I have to pee,’” recalls Dano. “And Greg refused to pull over. It was a bit.”
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“That’s true,” confirms Kinnear with a smile. “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… Those are real driving sequences.”
“I like the idea that this was the most dangerous film ever made,” quips Breslin, remembering a “very sweet” moment opposite her onscreen grandfather. “When we were doing the scene where I asked Alan Arkin’s character, ‘Am I pretty?’ On the first take he was like, ‘Cut, cut! Get her mother. She’s crying.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m acting.’”
Collette, 53, names that as her favorite scene. “The tears — it’s just unbelievably beautiful,” says the Australian star.
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The profanity of Arkin’s character also made an impression on the cast 20 years ago — save Breslin, who confirms she was listening on camera to Kelly Clarkson via headphones. “It’s so wrong and so funny,” says Collette of Arkin’s Oscar-winning line deliveries. “Anytime I hear anyone say anything about chicken, all I hear is Alan’s voice saying ‘the f—ing chicken!’”
