It’s 20 years since Martin Scorsese’s classic American crime drama Casino was released in cinemas.

Based on Nicholas Pileggi’s book, the 178-minute epic tells the story of Sam “Ace” Rothstein (played by Robert De Niro), a Jewish American top gambling handicapper who is called by the Italian Mob to look after the day-to-day operations at a Las Vegas casino.

To celebrate the movie’s 20th anniversary, here are 5 surprising facts about Casino…

1. Casino is the eighth collaboration between director Scorsese and Robert De Niro, after Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Goodfellas (1990), and Cape Fear (1991).

2. The movie’s costume budget was one million dollars! Robert de Niro wore 70 different costumes and co-star Sharon Stone had 40. Stone’s gold and white beaded gown weighed 45 pounds.

3. The Tangiers casino that the movie is set in is fictional and the casino and office scenes were actually filmed in the Riviera Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. If the movie was made in 2015, perhaps it would be about an online casino (for example William Hill offers to play online roulette).

4. The f-word is said 435 times in the movie – that’s an average of 2.4 times per minute! Martin Scorsese broke this record last year when he made The Wolf of Wall Street – that had nearly 600 uses of the f-word.

5. Madonna, Cameron Diaz, Uma Thurman, Nicole Kidman, Melanie Griffith, Rene Russo and Michelle Pfeiffer were all considered for the part of Ginger, before Sharon Stone managed to convince Scorsese to cast her.

What’s your favourite moment in Casino? Let us know below…