Christopher Plummer as Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Orson Welles as King Louis XVIII of France Jack Hawkins as Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton Virginia McKenna as Charlotte Lennox, Duchess of Richmond Rupert Davies as Colonel Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon Ian Ogilvy as Colonel Sir William Howe De Lancey Michael Wilding as Major-General The Honourable Sir William Ponsonby Sergo Zakariadze as Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher, Fürst von Wahlstatt Terence Alexander as Lieutenant-General Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge Donal Donnelly as Corporal O'Connor Oleg Vidov as Tomlinson Charles Borromel as Mulholland Peter Davies as Lieutenant-Colonel James Hay, Lord Hay Veronica De Laurentiis as Magdalene De Lancey Willoughby Gray as Major William Ramsay Roger Green as Duncan Richard Heffer as Captain Cavalié Mercer John Savident as Major-General Karl Freiherr von Müffling Jeffry Wickham as Colonel Sir John Colborne Susan Wood as Lady Sarah Lennox Andrea Esterhazy as Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond Karl Lyepinsk as Generalfeldmarschall August Neidhardt von Gneisenau Production De Laurentiis announced the film in October 1965, saying it would be made the following year. John Huston was to direct. Columbia Pictures published a 28-page, full-colour pictorial guide when it released Waterloo in 1970. According to the guidebook, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis had difficulty finding financial backers for the massive undertaking until he began talks with the Soviets in the late 1960s and reached agreement with Mosfilm. Final costs were over £12 million (GBP) (equivalent to about U.S. $38.3 million in 1970), making Waterloo one of the most expensive movies ever made, for its time. Had the movie been filmed in the West, costs might have been as much as three times this. Mosfilm contributed more than £4 million of the costs, and nearly 17,000 soldiers of the Soviet Army, including a full brigade of Soviet cavalry, and a host of engineers and labourers to prepare the battlefield in the rolling farmland outside Uzhhorod, Ukrainian SSR. To recreate the battlefield "authentically", the Soviets bulldozed away two hills, laid five miles of roads, transplanted 5,000 trees, sowed fields of rye, barley and wildflowers and reconstructed four historic buildings. To create the mud, more than six miles of underground irrigation piping was specially laid. Most of the battle scenes were filmed using five Panavision cameras simultaneously – from ground level, from 100-foot towers, from a helicopter, and from an overhead railway built right across