BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP
a Rowan Joffé film
Starring
Nicole Kidman
Colin Firth
Mark Strong
For further information please contact STUDIOCANAL:
Lucy Powell – lucy.powell@studiocanal.co.uk
0207 534 2700
Materials are available to download from www.studiocanal.co.uk/press
Running Time: 91mins
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SYNOPSIS
Before I Go To Sleep is a thriller based on the worldwide best-selling novel
about a woman who wakes up every day remembering nothing—the result of
a traumatic accident in her past—until one day, new terrifying truths emerge
that force her to question everyone around her…
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INTRODUCTION
What makes up a person? Are we just a sum of our memories? What is left if
you take away our memories? These were the questions preoccupying writer
S (Steve) J Watson as he looked for material for his debut novel. A former
NHS clinical scientist, Watson had won a place on a writing course at the
Faber & Faber creative writing academy in London in January 2009 and was
scanning the obituary pages of the newspapers in search of ideas for
characters.
“One of the obituaries I read was of a man called Henry Molaison,” Watson
reveals. “He was known as Patient HM for most of his adult life. He had had
severe amnesia as a result of an operation he’d had to try and cure him of his
epilepsy. Aged 26, they had removed those parts of his brain they thought
were responsible. What they hadn’t known was that those parts of his brain
were also responsible for forming new memories. He died aged 86.”
This sparked a mental image, which became the opening scene of the book,
and is now the opening scene of the film. “I imagined him getting up and
seeing his reflection in the mirror,” Watson describes. “He expected to see a
young man and instead sees someone in his 70s or 80s. This triggered the
idea of a woman meeting her own reflection and seeing someone very
different from the person she is expecting.”
Watson’s novel Before I Go To Sleep has been sold to more than 30
countries. It reached number seven on the US bestseller list, the highest
position for a debut novel by a British author since J. K. Rowling.
Award-winning UK director Rowan Joffé has now adapted Before I Go To
Sleep into a major new feature film for Ridley Scott’s Scott Free London. The
film is co-produced and fully financed by Los Angeles-based Millennium
Films. Early development was backed by StudioCanal.
Academy-Award winner Nicole Kidman stars as Christine, a woman who
wakes every day remembering nothing as a result of a traumatic accident in
her past, until one day new terrifying truths emerge that force her to question
everyone around her.
Two-time Academy-Award winner Colin Firth stars as Ben, the husband she
no longer knows. Acclaimed UK actor Mark Strong plays Dr Nasch, the man
who may or may not be helping her to regain her memory.
“What’s great about this story is that you are never sure whether you are
watching a movie about a woman who, as a result of a brain injury,
misconstrues the world around her and believes she is the victim of a
conspiracy,” says Joffé. “Or a thriller in which a character with amnesia is
being exploited for some nefarious ends by the men around her and she
needs to figure out what, who and why quickly or she’ll be in jeopardy.”
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The film is concerned with the universal themes of identity, love and loss,
confronting them within a gripping thriller format.
“A woman wakes up, she doesn’t recognise the man lying next to her,” says
producer Liza Marshall. “As she rushes to pick up her clothes she looks in the
mirror and she’s 40. She thinks she’s 27, but she’s 40. She looks at the wall
and it’s covered with notes that say, ‘this is your husband’. The man wakes up
and says, ‘I’m your husband’.” All of this happens on the first page of the book
and of the first two pages of the script. Then you’re in and you’re hooked. “
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ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
A tip-off from a friend in the publishing world first alerted producer Liza
Marshall to an exciting new book, which had just been delivered. It was early
2010 and Marshall, the head of film and TV at Scott Free London, the UK
production company owned by Ridley Scott, managed to get hold of a proof
copy of the book called Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson.
“It was completely brilliant,” recalls Marshall, who was previously head of
drama at UK broadcaster Channel 4. “I read it in one sitting.”
Marshall got hold of Watson’s email “through slight subterfuge” as the film
rights to the book were already attracting much interest. She wrote to tell him
Scott Free London wanted to option his book.
While at Channel 4, Marshall had worked on two critically acclaimed projects
with UK director Rowan Joffé. They were his directorial debut Secret Life, and
The Shooting Of Thomas Hurndall, for which Joffé had won a BAFTA award
for best fiction director. Joffé had since written and directed a bold take on
Brighton Rock and written an original thriller called The American, which was
directed by Anton Corbjn and starred George Clooney. Marshall had been
looking for a new project on which they could collaborate and believed Joffé
would be perfect to both write the adaptation and direct a feature version of
Before I Go To Sleep.
Joffé first read Watson’s novel while on holiday in Portugal. “I read Steve’s
book by the pool, pretty much in one sitting,” Joffé recalls. “I was so enthused
I started telling the story to my wife. I then became aware various other
members of my family had stopped splashing about in the pool and were all
listening to the story. From that moment on I got the bug and felt I absolutely
had to make this.”
The filmmaker also felt a personal connection to the story as his mother had
suffered amnesia following a brain haemorrhage 10 years earlier. “I remember
walking into her hospital room and her not recognising who I was,” says Joffé.
Marshall and Joffé convinced Watson they were the best team to transform
his book into film. It then took them a year to reach a draft script with which
both Marshall and Joffé were happy.
One of the biggest challenges of taking the written story to the screen was
how to portray the diary in which Christine writes. Much of the dynamism of
Watson’s novel takes place within Christine as she struggles to comprehend
the emotional impact of her always-new reality. Marshall describes the
breakthrough moment when they realised it should become a video diary.
“Suddenly the script came alive. It became an even better part for an actress
because you’ve got acting inside the camera and acting to the camera and it’s
such an intense part to play.
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“We always thought it was Christine’s film,” Marshall continues. “We’re
understanding what it must be like to wake up every morning and not
remember who you are. You think you are 27 but actually you are 40. Half
your life has gone by without you knowing it. How distressing and
discombobulating that must be.”
Watson was happy not to be involved in the film adaptation process. “This is
Rowan’s vision,” he explains. “I’m excited by seeing what someone else can
bring to it and seeing a different take on the material. It’s like revisiting an old
friend who has moved on a little and changed.”
Nicole Kidman plays Christine
The role of Christine is a demanding one as the character is in every scene
and voyages through tremendous highs and lows. To keep the audience
engaged by the character, it was imperative to attract a high-calibre actress to
the role.
Academy Award-winner Nicole Kidman had tracked the project from an early
stage after reading Joffé’s script.
“From the minute I read the script it got under my skin,” says Kidman. “That’s
such a good thing, because with characters and particularly with something
that’s sparse like this, it’s still very gripping. The book itself has been such a
huge hit, so now when I say to people, “Oh I did the film of Before I Go To
Sleep”, they say, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t wait to see that.’”
“She absolutely loved it,” confirms Marshall of Kidman’s passion for the
project. “She pursued us for the part and was committed to Christine from the
beginning. She’s absolutely perfect and I have always admired her as an
actress. She’s incredibly brave and chooses such interesting parts. Playing
Christine, you are immediately sympathetic towards her and her dilemma.
You want to find out why she has got like this.”
Christine is compelling as she is a character in search of her character and
Kidman captures Christine’s vulnerability perfectly. “What’s so fascinating
about Nicole’s performance is how quiet it is and how much is going on
around her eyes and in the expressions of her face,” says Joffé. “She will go
through myriad expressions in a few seconds. The movie has a lot of closeups to get the audience as close to Christine’s experience as possible.”
This is the second time Kidman has worked with her co-star Colin Firth. She
was delighted to have him join the project having just completed Railway Man
together.
“For me, I get to play opposite one of the greatest actors in the world, so I’m
always like, offer Colin everything!” she laughs. “I just love working with him.
He’s so easy, he’s extremely nuanced and yet he’s a listener. When you’re in
a scene with him, he listens and he responds; that’s the greatest acting,
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because you never know what’s going to happen in a scene and you have to
be willing to dance together and move and not have a plan. For some reason,
Colin and I just click on that level. I enjoy him. He’s so funny, he’s got that
very dry English wit. But on camera there’s some pretty brutal things and
some pretty scary things and there’s some stuff that he has to do that was
upsetting, but was necessary for the movie and necessary for it to have that
weight and that believability.”
Kidman’s co-stars, Colin Firth, who plays Christine’s husband Ben, and Mark
Strong, who plays Dr Nasch, praise the actress’s phenomenal technique.
“The way Nicole works is chasteningly authentic,” reveals Firth. “I feel like I
have to be at the top of my game. I can’t lie. I can’t be lazy about it. If I try to
sell her a bill of goods in a scene and it’s not true, I’ll see it in her face. I’ll
lose her. I’ve got to convince her.”
The two actors used a degree of improvisation in their scenes together. “The
writing is a series of options, of possibilities,” is how Firth describes how the
two actors approached the script. “It’s rather like a jazz theme. You have your
melody and you realise that according to what your colleagues are doing you
a might have to take that down a different route.”
The two actors worked with Joffé on the script at Firth’s home and over Skype
with Kidman. “As a writer-director it’s a fantastic experience when an actor
engages with a screenplay to the extent they want to bring stuff to it,” says
Joffé. “It’s a challenge too because you don’t want the script to become overly
detailed or fussy. But I think we did strike that balance.”
Kidman, known for her comprehensive research and character preparation
admits that she took on the subject of amnesia with a commitment that meant
she read everything she could to get as full a picture as possible about this
complex and still widely unfathomed condition.
“I studied it all,” she says. “In a film I can’t stand it when there’s big holes, and
I can’t stand it when there’s uncertainty about whether it’s a real medical
condition or a state of mind. I wanted to make sure that this was a real
condition. I watched a number of documentaries where people that do have
this psychogenic amnesia. The idea of actually having this is horrifying.
Someone described it as like losing their soul, because you lose your identity,
you lose actually what you are and that’s really chilling, and it’s also sad.
“There are questions about it in terms of psychology and psychiatry, as to
whether it actually does exist, but I truly believe it does exist. When you see
these people, it does exist. It’s a part of the brain that really shuts down.
“Most of my research was to do with the condition, so that it was plausible, so
that I myself could feel it and believe it, which is how I have to do every
character: if I can’t feel it and believe it, I’m hopeless.”
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A key contribution from Firth is the wiper board in Ben and Christine’s kitchen
which tells Christine where items such as aspirin and sanitary towels are kept
and what allergies she has. The nature of the relationship between Christine
and her husband Ben, who has to introduce himself and their life to her every
single day, is the cornerstone of the film.
“We find out about it as we go along,” says Firth of how he and Kidman
created their extremely complex relationship in front of the camera. “That’s a
sign of an interesting story and good writing. It’s all very well making decisions
before you come in but then you find, ‘this woman is in a worse state than I
thought. I’ve underestimated what this might take. I have to use the other
tools I wasn’t expecting to bring to the table. I’ve got to be more soothing than
I thought’. For instance, there were moments when the impulse would be to
go to Christine and to hold her, to reassure her. But to her, Ben is a complete
stranger. I would go to approach Nicole and she would look nervous about it
and I think, well, Christine is not ready for that. So the scene suddenly takes
on a different complexion.”
Kidman’s organic approach to the material fitted well with how Mark Strong
likes to work. “As you do the scene again and again you find little moments
and nuances that get incorporated into the next take,” Strong explains. “That’s
how you build it.”
Working with major stars and juggling their busy schedules can present a
director with a challenge. “If an actor agrees to be in your movie, how much
time you’re going to get with them before the cameras roll is not always clear
and definitely not always easy,” Joffé states. “ But Nicole was always really
accessible and we would talk on Skype at least once a week. She’s a really
assiduous actor. She prepares, she does her homework, learns her lines well
in advance. She read the script with a fine-toothed comb, making a case for
getting rid of particular words she didn’t like. We didn’t always agree, but
that’s part of the fun.”
Watson is thrilled Kidman and Firth inhabit the characters of Christine and
Ben. “When I heard it was Nicole Kidman and later Colin Firth, I though they
were perfect,” he novelist says. “Although in both cases these two were
different from the characters as I saw them as I was writing them, I could
totally see how they would work and how they would become those
characters.”
Colin Firth as Ben
How do you carry on loving someone who doesn’t love you? Who has to be
introduced to you every day and that you hope might love you by the end of
the day?
“It’s a massive task for him,” says Firth of Ben, the husband who made the
decision to check his wife out of the hospital where she was being treated for
her amnesia and care for her at home. “To decide to be the sole carer for
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somebody for whom every waking moment is a crisis… It’s immensely trying
to him, to breaking point.”
Joffé and Marshall were eager to cast a likeable actor who would elicit
sympathy from audiences who might otherwise suspect Ben’s motives. “He’s
a very warm, loving man who is putting up with this woman every morning,”
says Marshall. “He has to talk her through her life. There is a certain type of
man who can and wants to do that.”
Firth was at the top of Joffé’s wish list. “I had a fantasy about Colin Firth
playing Ben but I thought we’ll never get him because he’d just won two
Oscars in a row. I’m still amazed and grateful that we did.”
A pivotal moment in the film is when Christine discovers she and Ben had a
child and he hasn’t been telling her about it. The affability Firth brings to the
role allows audiences to accept Ben’s explanation for this.
“It seems a terrible cruelty to hide something as crucial as this,” Firth agrees.
“Until you hear what he has to say about it. He says, ‘I have to do this every
day. Am I really going to take you through that heartbreak every single day of
your life? This is a question of what I can handle as well. So today is a day
when you found out about it and it casts suspicion on me and makes me look
like a liar.’”
Mark Strong as Dr Nasch
The audience is firmly in Christine’s fragmented and fragile world and our
scepticisms and presumptions change as Christine’s do. To her - and to us everyone is both trusted and untrustworthy, including Dr Nasch, played by
Mark Strong. His character changes the dynamic of Christine’s world and
provides a new direction for the story to take.
“He’s her lifeline,” says Marshall. “When he first phones her, she initially does
not know whether she can trust him or not, and doesn’t know whether he is
who he says he is. Gradually she feels she can trust him and he’s a decent
character.”
Faced with the duality of such a character, Strong played him straight down
the line. “You have to be direct and play the character you have developed,”
Strong says of his process. “You have to allow the film and the audience’s
perception to alter. You can’t really guide them as that’s cheating in a way.
Music, the choice of shots and the magic of film allow that to be honed by the
director. Rowan has decided which moments will lead the audience to believe
whether he is trustworthy or not.”
The mere casting of Strong as a sympathetic character upends our
expectations. “What’s interesting about Mark’s performance is that you won’t
have seen Mark Strong like this in any other Mark Strong piece,” says Joffé.
“He’s doing something different. We like him a lot.”
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Creating Christine’s world
Joffé assembled a crew of experienced heads of department, most of whom
he had wanted to work with for many years. “The important thing a director
can do is assemble the best talent,” says Joffé. “My job is to put the most
talented people in the right positions and let them get on with it. The only thing
I have that nobody else has is that I know the story better than anybody. I
know it even better than the actors because they are more focussed on their
parts.”
Joffé was inspired by European rather than Hollywood thrillers, in particular
the work of Belgian auteurs Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. He wanted to
create a world that felt natural and real. He worked closely with director of
photography Ben Davis, whose credits include Layer Cake, Stardust and
Kick-Ass to build a palette of Christine’s world that avoided superfluity.
“We didn’t want it to become too thought-out, too introspective because we
didn’t want to lose the audience,” explains Davis. “I wanted the audience to
really believe it.”
Much of the film was shot on a handheld camera, a device that allows us to
follow a character through their world and immediately places us within
Christine’s subjective experience.
“I wanted the camera to feel like it was a little kid holding Christine’s hand,”
Joffé explains. “Everywhere she goes, we go. We always feel like a little kid
looking at mum, trying to figure if she is happy or sad. That dynamic between
the camera and the actor is where a lot of the chemistry in cinema happens.”
The cinematographer mapped out each scene very carefully, including the
weather, deliberately disorienting us. “Each day has a different weather
pattern,” he points out. “We decided early on what the day would be like and a
lot of it we wanted to be counter-intuitive. If it’s a day where there’s more
threat we created a sunny day. For the happier days, we went the other way.
“The film is about the repetition of her day so you need some of that repetition
with the camera angles,” Davis continues. “But we wanted some of that
repetition to show subtle differences each waking day.”
For the dream sequences, Joffé was influenced by the movies of Harmony
Korine and also the Coen Brothers, particularly Barton Fink. “There is some
surreal photography and Ben Davis and I had a lot of fun working with that,”
Joffé says. “I loved working with Ben, He’s so co-operative and willing and it
was a real collaboration. The skill it takes to deliver something this stylish is
overwhelming.”
The production design team worked hard to subtly portray the torpor in which
Christine is living and used a washed-out palette of greens and browns. The
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paintings of Edward Hopper and Algernon Newton provided inspiration, as
well as photographs of the actress Christina Ricci and Kidman herself by
Annie Leibowitz. Joffé told the team to take their lead stylistically from Alfred
Hitchcock’s films, particularly Spellbound and Dial M For Murder. The lighting
was kept as natural as possible.
Production designer Kave Quinn, who collaborated with Danny Boyle on
Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary, and costume designer
Michele Clapton, the costume designer for the hit TV series Game Of
Thrones, worked particularly closely together. “We wanted to try and make the
greens in my set balance out the earth colours Michele was bringing in,”
Quinn explains. “Michele gave me an idea of what colours she was going to
use and I had those swatches next to me to make sure it all worked. Christine
blends in with the set and as she gains confidence she starts to stand out a bit
more.”
Clapton was working to an interesting brief: Christine is a woman not in
charge of her own clothes. Rather, she is bound by the choices of her
husband. Christine’s clothes reflect Ben’s personality rather than her own.
“They are supposed to look like they have been put together by someone
who’s said, ‘that matches that and that matches that and there’s the shoes’.
But not put together in the way a woman would.” Clapton explains. “The shirts
are always un-tucked. There’s no belt and no earrings. It’s pared down to the
bare minimum.”
Firth underlines the extent of the control Ben necessarily has over Christine.
“Ben in some ways has to create her,” he muses. “It’s not just what she wears
on the outside, it’s also the underwear. Michele is quite careful to make sure
she’s sexy on the inside but not too eye-catching on the outside. The
underwear is a little more adventurous as that’s just for him.”
The oddity of Christine’s wardrobe is brought sharply into focus when she
meets with her old friend Claire, played by Anne-Marie Duff. In the present
day Claire is much more elegantly dressed than Christine. “Christine is not
really concerned with how she looks because she has a bigger question to
ask than ‘How do I look?’ which is ‘Who the hell am I?’ and ‘What’s going on?”
says Joffé.
Before I Go To Sleep subverts the Hollywood glamour of both Kidman and
Firth. “It is part of the fun to make them not how we usually see them,” says
Clapton. “They as actors bring something of that along. They assume the role
and if the costumes are right, they don’t look odd on them, or they look odd in
the right way. Colin’s character is quite smart and tight and together so
everything is very considered which isn’t something that is very alien to Colin.
He wears suits very well.”
As Dr Nasch, Strong’s wardrobe provides a contrast with Ben’s. “We wanted
Nasch to be a little softer and more causal than Ben,” Strong explains. “I have
a kind of soft knitted tie and a moleskin jacket which is very soft. We decided
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what we wanted for him was a bit more of an academic flavour, rather than a
medical or business flavour.”
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The locations of the film
As the world of Before I Go Sleep moved from the printed page into the visual
medium of cinema, the team had fun with the locations and used them to play
into Christine’s, and our, sense of dislocation. The book is set in London but
the film transfers the story to somewhere vague and much more isolated to
reflect Christine’s state of mind. The house itself is very much a character in
the film.
“When we were working in pre-production, we talked a lot about the kind of
house they should live in,” Marshall explains. “In the book it’s a Victorian
terraced house in Crouch End. As I read the book, I thought that wasn’t very
cinematic. With Rowan, we looked at every architectural style in London, from
big white stucco houses in Notting Hill to tower blocks in Borough. We finally
found this fantastic, late 1960s house, just outside of London. What drew us
to the house was that we could be anywhere.”
The filmmakers were naturally keen to make a globally appealing film and not
something that simply reflect contemporary London. Finding a house that
looked as if it could be located anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere was
part of that. There were aesthetic reasons too. “I wanted a house that felt
anodyne, antiseptic and sterile. Their house is like a hotel room,” says Joffé.
“Setting it in the suburbs disenfranchises her from any community. There are
no neighbours, she can’t walk to a local high street, and woods surround the
house. There is a princess-locked-in-a-castle feel to it.”
The 1960s style of architecture had further advantages. “The beauty of these
houses is that they have a lot of look-throughs and knock-throughs,” says
Quinn. “It’s almost like a goldfish bowl, so Ben can keep an eye on Christine.
He’s keeping her like a doll.”
The exterior of the house was shot in Surrey, southwest of London. Further
location shoots took place around London with location manager Jason
Wheeler intent on finding unusual shots of London.
“What Christine sees when she ventures away from the house was very much
part of the brief,” says Wheeler. “There is a sense of isolation when she’s
walking through a park or walking down the road. She still feels on her own.
What she sees and the parts of London she sees are not obvious. She
doesn’t see Big Ben, for example, or anywhere very recognisable. That’s not
what this story is about.”
The film’s one identifiable location comes in the last quarter of the film and
involves Duff’s character Claire. “The scene is set in Greenwich Park, around
Greenwich Observatory, overlooking the City of London,” says Joffé. “There’s
a real sense Christine has come home, geographically and psychologically.
She is reuniting with an old friend and putting together the final pieces, or so
she thinks, of the jigsaw.”
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Every other location is unfamiliar. When Christine is in a car, it is raining
outside, when she is in an office, the windows are steamed up. “I tried to keep
the film as claustrophobic as possible,” Joffé explains. “There are no really big
wide shots until she has a bit of perspective on her own life. She really only
knows what’s going on on that day, apart from the device of the video diary,
which allows her to know what’s happened on previous days that she has
recorded. Her visibility is low, until the end of the movie.”
The Greenwich Park scene, which finally places the film in London, is also
Joffé’s way of honouring the book. “I have a huge creative debt to the book,”
the filmmaker says.
Three weeks of interiors took place at Twickenham Studios in West London.
Production sound mixer Simon Hayes was thrilled to shoot at Twickenham.
“It’s one of the best soundstages in London,” he enthuses. “We’re really
benefitting from how quiet it is here because we can really capture these
intimate performances on the stage and enhance these crisp, intimate
interiors.”
Shooting at Twickenham also gave Joffé the ability to move the camera in a
way he could not have done on location. “I can take a wall out, I can take a
ceiling off, I can get a camera 350 feet away from my actors and put a long
lens on,” says Joffé of shooting on a set.
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Anatomy of a thriller
Stories with plot twists present a very specific challenge as they rely on the
story functioning well on two levels, the ostensible story and the actual story.
“Normally what happens in the actual story has got to be really dramatic
because when you reveal it, the audience has got to go ‘Oh my God’,” says
Joffé. “But the ostensible story must be dramatic too. It has to disguise the
fact there’s something else going on. So the red herring must be a really vivid
red or the audience won’t be interested. And as you are spending the body of
the film telling the ostensible story, it had better be dramatic, in and of itself.”
The merry-go-round of semi-memories and flashbacks that is Christine’s
character made the job of editor Melanie Oliver particularly interesting.
“Where do we start and how do we get to the end without it feeling like we’ve
told the story many, many times?” says Oliver, whose most recent credits
include Les Miserables and Anna Karenina. “It’s been a wonderful exercise of
pockets of information, and then we have to erase them and then we have to
sort of jolt the memory again. We’ve been playing with sound and music quite
a lot as a form of recall.”
“It’s just really hard to find great thrillers, for me it was such a strong thriller,”
says Nicole Kidman. “There are so few good thrillers. It’s probably my
favourite film genre, and I’d been looking and looking. I made a film years
ago called The Others, and it’s one of my favourite films that I’ve made, and
so I’ve been looking for something that has the same sort of twists and turns
and thrills, and this had that.”
Kidman admits she’s a huge fan of writer-directors. There’s a flexibitlity she
admires in their ability to rewrite the script as the physical process of
performing the role takes shape.
“He’s got a vision for it,” Kidman says of Joffé. “He knows it like the back of
his hand, and you can ask him a question and he has the answer. Particularly
with something like this, which was so complicated. It was great to be able to
go to Rowan and say, “Well, hold on…” because this really is heady stuff. I
needed to be able to say to him, and so did Colin, that this movie can be a
head spin. Luckily, Rowan had intensively graphed and mapped it. He
always had the answer, and that was such a relief and I’d say to him, Thank
God, I can lean on you.”
Before I Go To Sleep is also a very emotional story, about a woman who
grieves for her son anew each day. “A lot of thrillers are cerebral,” Joffé
suggests. “They rely on jeopardy and don’t carve out really emotional territory
to do with grief, loss, marriage, and love. This story does. It works in its own
right. Nicole and Colin give amazing performances just dealing with those
emotions.”
The production team worked hard to not give the plot twists away. “You don’t
notice, for example, that it’s only two people in the photographs on the photo
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wall Ben has put together,” says Quinn. “That way it’s done is a combination
of different places and locations. You would never notice until towards the end
of the film.”
Of course, the book’s multi-million readers come to the film knowing what is
going to happen. As a great reader herself, producer Liza Marshall is hopeful
the film has captured the Christine in people’s heads. “I know how frustrating
it can be to see a film and it doesn’t capture the essence of the book. I think
we’ve captured the spirit and tone of it.”
Just as Watson wrote Before I Go To Sleep to entertain people, hoping it
would provoke further thought in readers too, as an audience we enjoy a
similar experience - followed by a shiver.
“When I read Rowan’s script, I saw it as a really exciting thriller,” says
Watson. “And when the credits roll, there’s lots to think about there as well:
‘What would I do in that situation? Would I react differently? What makes me
who I am?’”
For Nicole Kidman, the film offers an emotional base, which she argues, is all
too rare.
“It’s a genre picture, but I feel it’s got so much more texture than that,” she
says. “I would hope that it’s a mixture. There’s the ride - which a thriller has
to deliver on - and I hope there are a couple of moments that are really big
gasps, or screams. But I’m interested much more in psychological thrillers
than I am in straight horror thrillers, even though I’ll go see horror films
because I’m a horror fan.
“I’m not sure how many horror films I’d want to make, but the psychological
thriller for me, is one of the greatest film genres, if you can achieve it. Don’t
Look Now, is one of my all time favourite movies, which I’ve watched maybe
twenty times, so I would hope I would get to do a couple of really great
psychological thrillers in my career. I would hope this is one of them.”
For Joffé, the film is about the mysteriousness of life. “As humans, we don’t
have all the answers” says the director. “That’s what’s so profoundly
entertaining about this film. We are locked in a very subjective experience as
human beings, constantly trying to get to the truth and we never get there.
This movie is about that, and it’s about the fun of the process and the
adventure of it.”
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ABOUT THE CAST
Nicole Kidman (Christine)
Nicole Kidman first came to the attention of American audiences with her
critically acclaimed performance in Phillip Noyce’s 1989 psychological
thriller Dead Calm. She has since become an internationally recognised,
award-winning actress known for her range and versatility. In 2003, Kidman
won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award and a
Berlin Silver Bear for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in Stephen Daldry’s The
Hours. In 2002, she was honoured with her first Oscar nomination for her
performance in Baz Luhrmann’s musical, Moulin Rouge! For that role, and
her performance in Alejandro Amenabar’s, The Others, she received dual
2002 Golden Globe nominations, winning for Best Actress in a Musical.
Kidman was awarded her initial Golden Globe for her role in Gus Van
Sant’s To Die For, and has been nominated three additional times: for her
performances in Jonathan Glazer’s Birth, Anthony Minghella’s Cold
Mountain, and Robert Benton’s Billy Bathgate. In 2010, Kidman starred
in Rabbit Hole, directed by John Cameron Mitchell, for which she received
Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. Kidman’s
most recent projects include Lee Daniel’s The Paperboy, for which her
performance has earned her a Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe
nomination; Chan-wook Park’s Stoker; and the forthcoming Jonathan
Teplitzky’s The Railway Man and Grace of Monaco directed by Oliver Dahan.
Kidman’s additional film credits include: Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the
Wedding; The Golden Compass directed by Chris Weitz; Dennis Dugan’s Just
Go with It; Rob Marshall’s film adaptation of the musical Nine; Baz
Luhrmann’s Australia; Steven Shainberg’s Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane
Arbus; Pollack’s The Interpreter; Nora Ephron’s Bewitched; Robert
Benton’s The Human Stain; Lars von Trier’s Dogville; Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes
Wide Shut; Jez Butterworth’s Birthday Girl; Mimi Leder’s The Peacemaker;
Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady; Joel Schumacher’s Batman
Forever; Harold Becker’s Malice and Ron Howard’s Far and Away. In
television, Kidman was recently seen in the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn,
for which her performance earned her an Emmy, Screen Actors Guild and
Golden Globe nomination.
Colin Firth (Ben)
Veteran actor of film, television and stage, Colin Firth earned an Academy
Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, British Independent
Film Award, Critics’ Choice Award and his second consecutive BAFTA Award
in 2011 for his performance as King George VI in Tom Hooper’s The King’s
Speech. Firth also won the BAFTA Award in 2010 and the Volpi Cup for ‘Best
Actor’ at the 2009 Venice Film Festival for his performance in Tom Ford’s A
Single Man. Firth’s other most notable screen credits to date include:
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Shakespeare in Love directed by John Madden, Anthony Minghella’s The
English Patient, Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Phyllida Lloyd’s
Mamma Mia!, Beeban Kildron’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and
Peter Webber’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Firth’s past screen credits include: Anand Tucker’s When Did You Last See
Your Father?, Stephan Elliott’s Easy Virtue, Michael Winterbottom’s Genova,
Oliver Parker’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Nanny McPhee directed by
Kirk Jones, A Thousand Acres directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, Hugh
Hudson’s My Life So Far, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, and the title role in Milos
Forman’s Valmont. On the small screen, Firth is infamous for his breakout
role as Mr. Darcy in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice directed by
Simon Langton, for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor and
the National Television Award for Most Popular Actor.
Mark Strong (Dr Nasch)
One of today’s most compelling and charismatic actors, Mark Strong will soon
be seen in Nae Caranfil’s Closer to the Moon and his other most notable
screen credits include: Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, RocknRolla, and
Revolver; Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood and Body of Lies, Tom Alfredson’s
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass and Stardust.
Strong’s other film credits to date include Eran Creevy’s Welcome to the
Punch, Nick Murphy’s Blood, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Black Gold, Andrew
Stanton’s John Carter, Jean-Marc Vallée’s The Young Victoria, Pete Travis’
Endgame; Vicente Amorim’s Good, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and Stephen
Gaghan’s Syriana, Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist; David Evans’ Fever Pitch
and The Eagle directed by Kevin Macdonald. His other telefilm and miniseries
credits include Our Friends in the North, directed by Simon Cellan Jones and
Stuart Urban; Pete Travis’ The Jury and Henry VIII; Roger Michell’s The
Buddha of Suburbia; Danny Boyle’s Screenplay episode “Not Even God Is
Wise Enough” and for directors David Drury and Tom Hooper, respectively,
Prime Suspect 3 and Prime Suspect 6.
Anne-Marie Duff (Claire)
Anne-Marie Duff has won industry and critical plaudits for her work in film and
television, and on stage. Her memorable portrayal of John Lennon’s mother
Julia in Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy earned her many prestigious
accolades, including the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best
Actress, the British Independent Film Award (BIFA), and a BAFTA Award
nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Among Ms. Duff’s other notable
features are Lenny Abrahamson’s Garage, for which she received an Irish
Film and Television Award (IFTA) nomination for Best Supporting Actress;
Peter Mullan’s award-winning The Magdalene Sisters; Michael Hoffman’s The
Last Station and Is Anybody There? directed by John Crowley.
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One of her best-known roles is as Fiona in the original U.K. television series
version of Shameless, for which she won an IFTA Award and received two
BAFTA Award nominations. Ms. Duff was again a BAFTA nominee for her
performance as Elizabeth I in Coky Giedroyc’s miniseries The Virgin Queen.
Ms. Duff starred as the legendary Margot Fonteyn in the BBC telefilm Margot,
directed by Otto Bathurst. Her other notable telefilm and miniseries work
include Joe Wright’s The Last King (a.k.a. Charles II: The Power & The
Passion); Giacomo Campiotti’s Doctor Zhivago; Aisling Walsh’s Sinners;
Parade’s End, directed by Susanna White and most recently, the BAFTA
nominated, The Accused, created by Jimmy McGovern and directed by David
Blair.
ABOUT THE CREW
Rowan Joffé (Director and Screenwriter)
Rowan Joffé is an award winning writer and director, whose directorial
debut, Secret Life, was hailed as ‘a masterpiece' by critics at both The
Times and The Guardian newspapers. His second directing project, The
Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, won Rowan a BAFTA Award for Best Fiction
Director 2009, as well as a host of award nominations, including nominations
for Best Single Drama at both the BAFTAs and the RTS Awards.
In 2009, Rowan wrote and began directing his BIFA nominated film adaptation
of Graham Greene's classic novel, Brighton Rock, for Optimum Films, which
was released in 2011, just after US Box Office number 1 The American, which
was released in 2010 starring George Clooney. Rowan is the two time
Michael Powell Award winning writer of numerous other films including the
BAFTA winning Last Resort and critically acclaimed sequel 28 Weeks Later.
Liza Marshall (Producer)
Liza Marshall is Head of Film and TV at Scott Free London. Prior to Scott
Free she was Head of Drama at Channel 4 where she was responsible for all
drama output across the broadcaster. Liza started at Scott Free in January
2010. Previously, Liza was a producer at the BBC where she produced amongst others - the multiple BAFTA winner The Long Firm, Prix Europa
winner Eroica, The Sins, Derailed, and Fields Of Gold.
Liza Marshall’s credits include: Kevin Macdonald’s Life In A Day, John
Crowley’s Boy A, Rowan Joffé’s The Shooting of Thomas Hurndull, Gabriel
Range’s Death of a President, Endgame directed by Pete Travis and Poppy
Shakespeare directed by Ben Ross. Liza has also produced series’ and
miniseries’ including, Marc Munden’s The Devil’s Whore and Shane
Meadows’ This is England ’86. Liza Marshall is now producing Tony Grisoni’s
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award-winning trilogy of films Red Riding, directed by Julian Jarrald and in
development by Scott Free as a major feature film, with Sony.
Ridley Scott (Executive Producer)
Renowned Academy Award®-nominated director Ridley Scott has been
honoured with Academy Award® nominations for Best Director for his work on
Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, and Thelma & Louise. All three films also
earned him DGA Award nominations. Scott most recently released the
acclaimed hit Prometheus starring Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace and
Charlize Theron. Next up for Scott is The Counselor, written by Cormac
McCarthy and starring Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, and
Javier Bardem. Fox will release the film in Fall, 2013.
Scott has garnered multiple nominations over his illustrious career. In
addition to his Academy Award® and DGA nominations, he also earned a
Golden Globe® nomination for Best Director for American Gangster, starring
Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. As he also served as a producer on
the true-life drama, Scott received a BAFTA nomination for Best Film. Scott
also received Golden Globe® and BAFTA nominations for Best Director for
his epic Gladiator. The film won the Academy Award®, Golden Globe®, and
BAFTA awards for Best Picture.
In 1977, Scott made his feature film directorial debut with The Duellists, for
which he won the Best First Film Award at the Cannes Film Festival. He
followed with the blockbuster science-fiction thriller Alien, which catapulted
Sigourney Weaver to stardom and launched a successful franchise. In 1982,
Scott directed the landmark film Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford.
Considered a science-fiction classic, the futuristic thriller was added to the
U.S. Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 1993, and a director’s cut
of Blade Runner was released to renewed acclaim in 1993 and again in 2007.
Scott’s additional film directing credits include Legend, starring Tom Cruise;
Someone to Watch Over Me; Black Rain, starring Michael Douglas and Andy
Garcia; 1492: Conquest of Paradise; White Squall, starring Jeff Bridges; G.I.
Jane, starring Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen; Hannibal, starring Anthony
Hopkins and Julianne Moore; Body of Lies, starring Russell Crowe and
Leonardo DiCaprio; A Good Year, starring Russell Crowe and Albert Finney;
the epic Kingdom of Heaven, with Orlando Bloom and Jeremy Irons; and
Matchstick Men, starring Nicolas Cage and Sam Rockwell. Scott’s latest
directorial effort was the hit version of the timeless tale of Robin Hood marking
his fifth collaboration with star Russell Crowe, also starring Cate Blanchett.
Ridley and his brother Tony formed commercial and advertising production
company RSA in 1967. RSA has an established reputation for creating
innovating and groundbreaking commercials for some of the world's most
recognized corporate brands. In 1995, Ridley and Tony formed the film and
television production company Scott Free. With offices in Los Angeles and
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London, the Scott’s have produced such films as In Her Shoes, The A-Team,
Cyrus, The Grey, and the Academy Award®-nominated The Assassination of
Jesse James.
In television, they also executive produce the Emmy®, Peabody, and Golden
Globe® winning hit TV show The Good Wife for CBS, as well as the hit longrunning series, Numbers, which ran for six seasons also on CBS. In
addition, Ridley and Tony also served as executive producers on the
company’s long-form projects including the Starz miniseries The Pillars of The
Earth; the A&E miniseries The Andromeda Strain, based on the book by
Michael Crichton; the TNT miniseries The Company; and the award-winning
HBO movies RKO 281, The Gathering Storm, and Into the Storm.
Additionally, Scott will direct his first-ever television pilot with The Vatican for
Sony Pictures Television, written by Paul Attanasio, which explores the
relationships and rivalries, in addition to the mysteries and miracles behind
the Catholic Church, Scott will also executive-produce.
In 2003, Scott was awarded a knighthood from the Order of the British Empire
in recognition of his contributions to the arts.
AVI LERNER (Executive Producer) is the Chairman and founder of Nu Image, Inc.,
Millennium Films and all related companies. With more than 350 films to his credit,
he is one of the most experienced, prolific and successful independent producers of
our time.
Born and raised in Haifa, Israel, Lerner began as manager of Israel’s first drive-in
cinema. In 1979, Lerner anticipated the explosion of home video rental, which led to
his pioneering the largest specialized video distribution company in Israel, and
becoming a partner in the country’s largest theatrical distribution company.
In 1984, he executive produced the remake of King Solomon’s Mines. He then sold
his Israeli company and relocated to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he founded
the Nu Metro Entertainment Group. The company’s interests grew to include owned
and operated theaters; a video distribution division representing top studios and
independent companies; and a production arm that made over 60 features
distributed worldwide by major studios. Lerner eventually sold Nu Metro to join
MGM/United Artists.
In 1992, he moved to Los Angeles and opened Nu Image, Inc., focusing on
production and distribution for the home entertainment market. In 1996, he launched
Millennium Films, which produces theatrical motion pictures.
Under the Millennium Films label, Lerner has produced such films as Expendables 1
& 2, Rambo IV, Righteous Kill, Brooklyn’s Finest, The Mechanic and the 2013 boxoffice hit, Olympus Has Fallen starring Gerard Butler.
The company’s forthcoming pictures include Before I Go to Sleep, starring Colin Firth
and Nicole Kidman, and Eliza Graves with Kate Beckinsale, Jim Sturgess, Ben
Kingsley and Michael Caine. The Expendables 3 opening in August 2014, stars
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Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry
Crews and Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to their roles in the first two films.
Wesley Snipes, Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford join the all-star
cast along with Kellan Lutz, MMA star Ronda Rousey, welterweight boxing champion
Victor Ortiz and Glen Powell.
TREVOR SHORT (Executive Producer) oversees legal, finance and administrative
operations for Nu Image, Inc., Millennium Films and all related companies.
Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, Short obtained a Bachelor of Law from the University of
Rhodesia and an MBA at the University of Cape Town where he was awarded the
Gold Medal. In 1980, Short entered the world of banking and commerce, joining
Standard Chartered Merchant Bank in Harare as head of Corporate Finance,
responsible for takeovers, mergers and IPO’s. He then moved to Hill Samuel
Merchant Bank in Johannesburg in 1984 as head of its Corporate Finance Division
and subsequently to Investec Bank where he was responsible for eight IPOs on the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange, as well as numerous mergers and acquisitions
Short’s finance background led him to develop a tax based financing formula to
produce motion pictures in South Africa. He succeeded in procuring over $200
million from private investors to fund the production of international films made in
South Africa. Much of the financing he secured was for films produced by Avi
Lerner’s Nu Metro group for international film companies. He also became a
consultant to the Government of South Africa regarding film incentive legislation.
In 1989, Short left the banking sector to join Lerner as a shareholder in and Chief
Executive of Nu Metro Entertainment Group in Johannesburg. He continued to
arrange financing for Nu Metro’s film production and was directly involved in its
expanding its theater chain. In 1991, Lerner and Short used proceeds from the sale
of Nu Metro Entertainment Group to start a new studio in California. Nu Image, Inc.
opened its doors in Los Angeles in 1992.
Short’s expertise; in finance, law, investments, tax legislation, subsidies, international
and domestic banking has been applied to the many foreign co-productions
undertaken by the Nu Image group over the years. This includes the development of
Nu Boyana Studios in Bulgaria and Millennium Studios in Louisiana, both of which
are full service production facilities available to the film industry and often used by
Millennium Films.
Short has served as producer or executive producer on nearly all Nu Image and
Millennium Films productions since the beginning.
The Upcoming releases for Short and the independent studio include: Before I Go to
Sleep starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman; Eliza Graves with Kate Beckinsale, Jim
Sturgess, Ben Kingsley and Michael Caine; and The Expendables 3 opening in
August 2014, stars Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren,
Randy Couture, Terry Crews and Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to their roles in
the first two films. Wesley Snipes, Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford
join the all-star cast along with Kellan Lutz, MMA star Ronda Rousey, welterweight
boxing champion Victor Ortiz and Glen Powell.
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BOAZ DAVIDSON (Executive Producer) is the Head of Development and Creative
Affairs for Millennium Films. He has been with the firm and its parent company, Nu
Image, Inc., since 1992. However, he is equally well known as the writer-director of
the critically acclaimed worldwide hit film Lemon Popsicle, which debuted at the
Berlin Film Festival, receiving its Panorama Audience Award and spawning more
than a dozen sequels.
Davidson was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, graduated from London Film School, and
moved to the United States in 1979. He joined Cannon Films, where he oversaw
production on such films as: Going Bananas, Delta Force, American Cyborg, Salsa;
and most notably an American version of Lemon Popsicle titled The Last American
Virgin. Today both Israeli and American versions are considered cult classics.
In 1992, Davidson joined Nu Image, Inc. co-founders and played an integral role
forming the new independent studio. He continued to write, direct, and produce such
films as Looking for Lola, Shadrach, and The Big Brass Ring. In 1996, Nu Image
formed Millennium Films, where Davidson has overseen the development and
production of such films as The Expendables 1 and 2, Rambo IV, Righteous Kill, 16
Blocks, The Mechanic, Brooklyn's Finest, The Iceman, The Big Wedding, Playing the
Field, and The Paperboy, an official selection of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
Next up for Davidson are Millennium Films’ features including: Good People starring
James Franco and Kate Hudson; The Expendables 3 with returning and new stars
Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry
Crews, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes, Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson,
Harrison Ford, Kellan Lutz, MMA star Ronda Rousey, welterweight boxing champion
Victor Ortiz and Glen Powell; London Has Fallen, the highly anticipated sequel to the
worldwide smash hit Olympus Has Fallen; Survivor starring Milla Jovovich, Emma
Thompson, Pierce Brosnan and Angela Bassett; and the long awaited remake of
Davidson’s Lemon Popsicle, an update of The Last American Virgin.
JOHN THOMPSON (Executive Producer) grew up in Rome where his fine body of
work in the Italian film industry throughout the 1980s and 90s includes Franco
Zeffirelli's Otello (two Oscar® nominations, Cannes Official Selection, American
Critics Award); Claude D'Anna's Salome (Cannes Official Selection); Lina
Wertmuller's Camorra (four Donatello Awards, Berlin Film Fest official entry); Liliana
Cavani's Berlin Interior (Donatello Award, Berlin Film Festival official selection); Paul
Schrader's The Comfort of Strangers (Cannes Official Selection); Ivan Passer's
Haunted Summer (Venice Film Festival Official Selection); Jerzy Skolimowski's
Torrents of Spring (Cannes Official Selection) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Everybody's
Fine (Cannes Official Selection).
Thompson returned to Los Angeles to helm production for Millennium Films in 1998.
Films he has produced or co-produced for Millennium Films include: American
Perfekt written and directed by Paul Chart (Cannes Official Selection); Susanna
Styron's Shadrach (Venice Official Selection); Some Girl from Rory Kelly (Best
Director Award, LA Independent Film Festival); Audrey Wells' Guinevere; George
24
Hickenlooper's Big Brass Ring, as well as Prozac Nation, Nobody's Baby, The
Replicant, Try Seventeen, Undisputed and other successful productions.
Continuing as Millennium’s Head of Production, Thompson has gone on to produce
The Mechanic, The Expendables 1 and 2, Brooklyn's Finest, Righteous Kill, Rambo
IV and The Big Wedding, Playing the Field and Stolen. Thompson’s future releases
include: Good People starring James Franco and Kate Hudson; The Expendables 3
with returning and new cast of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph
Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes,
Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Kellan Lutz, MMA star Ronda
Rousey, welterweight boxing champion Victor Ortiz and Glen Powell; London Has
Fallen, the highly anticipated sequel to the worldwide smash hit Olympus Has Fallen;
an update of The Last American Virgin; and Lennigrad from acclaimed Cinema
Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore.
MARK GILL (Producer), former Miramax Films and Warner Independent
president, was named President of Millennium Films in July 2011, with
particular focus on development, packaging, production and marketing. There,
he produced the hit film Olympus Has Fallen and has assembled a slate of
more than 40 projects, from which six to eight films are produced annually.
Gill has 25 years of film business experience and a production track record of
more than $1 billion at the box office.
He most recently was the CEO and co-founder of The Film Department, an
independent movie production and finance company, which produced the
worldwide hit Law-Abiding Citizen. In the three prior years, Gill served as the
founding president of Warner Independent Pictures. During his tenure, the
company produced 15 films and earned 11 Oscar® nominations, notably for
March of the Penguins and Good Night, and Good Luck.
Gill previously spent eight years at Miramax Films as President of
Miramax/L.A. He was involved in the production or acquisition of more than
two dozen films; among them were The Talented Mr. Ripley, Central Station,
Apocalypse Now Redux, In the Bedroom, Amelie, The Quiet American, Frida,
Rabbit-Proof Fence, City of God and Under the Tuscan Sun.
He joined Miramax in 1994 and served three years as the company’s
marketing chief, based in New York. Among the films he marketed: Pulp
Fiction, Scream, Good Will Hunting, Trainspotting, The Postman (Il Postino,)
The English Patient, Life is Beautiful and Shakespeare in Love.
Before joining Miramax, Gill worked for six years at Columbia and TriStar
Pictures, culminating in a three-year tenure as Senior Vice President in the
marketing department. He worked on such films as The Age of Innocence,
Awakenings, Boyz N the Hood, Bram Stoker's Dracula, In the Line of Fire, A
League of Their Own, The Prince of Tides, The Remains of the Day, A River
Runs Through It, and Terminator 2.
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Prior to joining Columbia, Gill worked for nearly four years at Rogers &
Cowan, the publicity agency. Before that, he served as a general assignment
reporter for Newsweek magazine and for the Los Angeles Times.
MATTHEW JAMES O’TOOLE’S (Producer) work as a producer is seen in
blockbuster franchise hits like The Expendables 1 and 2, Rambo IV and
Texas Chainsaw 3D. His extensive work with Millennium Films productions
has included Conan the Barbarian (2011), Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia
and countless more. O’Toole began working in the film industry at the eager
young age of 14. His first job was as a production runner on Tim Burton’s
Batman, which was shooting near his home in England at the legendary
Pinewood Studios. Since then, his work has taken him across the globe and
back on big budget epic productions that include three films with acclaimed
director Ridley Scott: Academy Award® Winner Gladiator, Kingdom of
Heaven and Black Hawk Down as well as Evita, Billy Elliott, Troy, Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Secret Garden, Judge Dredd, Othello, The
Avengers, and the Emmy® Award-winning Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks HBO
mini-series Band of Brothers.
Forthcoming releases on O’Toole’s filmography include: Before I Go to Sleep
starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman; Good People staring James Franco,
Kate Hudson and Academy Award® Nominee Tom Wilkinson; and Survivor
with the all-star cast of Milla Jovovich, Angela Bassett, Emma Thompson,
Pierce Brosnan and Dylan McDermott.
Peter Heslop (Co-producer)
Peter Heslop’s recent work as a Co-Producer includes the Academy Awardwinning and BAFTA Award-winning The King’s Speech, directed by Tom
Hooper. Heslop’s other film credits as co-producer include Malcolm Venville’s
44 Inch Chest and Control directed by Anton Corbijn. Heslop was Unit
Production Manager on Blood and Chocolate directed by Katia Von Garnier
and on Garth Jennings’ Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, as well as on Jan
De Bont’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 2.
Heslop’s other film credits include: Simon: An English Legionaire, directed by
Martin Huberty, The Four Feathers, directed by Shekhar Kapur, George
Lucas’ Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,
Michael Apted’s Enigma, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Stephen Sommers’ The
Mummy. His Television credits include: Privates directed by Bob Spiers and
Lucasfilm’s 1992-3 The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
Ben Davis (Director of Photography)
Ben Davis, BSC.
Ben’s feature film credits include Jonathan Liebesman’s Wrath of the Titans,
John Madden’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Debt, Mikael
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Hafstrom’s The Rite, Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe, Gerald
McMorrow’s Franklyn, Sharon Maguire’s Incendiary and Peter
Webber’s Hannibal Rising. Ben has collaborated extensively with director
Matthew Vaughn on Layer Cake, Stardust and Kick-Ass. Ben’s work can also
be seen in the short film, The Tonto Woman, which received an Academy
nomination in 2008 for Best Live Action short film. Ben’s recent credits
include Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths, starring Sam Rockwell,
Christopher Walken and Woody Harrelson, and Pascal Chaumeil’s A Long
Way Down with Pierce Brosnan, Guy Pearce and Imogen Poots. He is
currently shooting Guardians of the Galaxy with director James Gunn.
Simon Hayes (Production Sound Mixer)
Simon Hayes was awarded an Oscar for Sound Mixing on Les Miserables.
His work on Les Miserables was also honoured with the BAFTA for Sound
and the CAS award for Achievement in Sound Mixing. His other recent
feature credits include Ridley Scott's The Counselor, starring Brad Pitt,
Michael Fassbender and Javier Bardem and Prometheus, starring Noomi
Rapace, Charlize Theron and Idris Elba. He also worked with director Danny
Boyle on Trance, starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent
Cassell.
Simon has collaborated extensively with director Matthew Vaughn on several
features including Stardust, Layer Cake, Kick Ass and X-Men: First Class.
Other varied film credits include Daniel Barber's Harry Brown, Paul
Greengrass's Green Zone, Phyllida Lloyd's Mamma Mia!, Edgar Wright's
Shaun of the Dead and Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and
Snatch.
Kave Quinn (Production Designer)
Kave Quinn studied fashion at St Martins School of Art. She began her film
career in the costume department, later moving to the art department, and
has been working as a Production Designer in her own right for the last 15
years. A frequent collaborator with director Danny Boyle, her credits include
Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary. More recent films
include Layer Cake directed by Matthew Vaughn and Broken directed by
Rufus Norris.
In 2011, Kave designed James Watkin’s Woman In Black which, according to
box office figures, became the most successful British horror film on
record. In 2012, Kave designed Rufus Norris’ directing debut, Broken which
went on to win the BIFA for Best Film and Kave also designed the much
anticipated Diana, directed by Academy Award nominated Oliver
Hirschbeigel, and starring Naomi Watts in the title role.
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Michele Clapton (Costume Designer)
Michele Clapton has been working as a Costume Designer for 20 years in film
and television. She has worked on high profile projects such as Sense and
Sensibility, for which she was nominated for Best Costume Design for a
Television Mini Series at the Costume Designers Guild Awards 2009 and The
Devil’s Whore with director Marc Munden, winning the BAFTA Award for Best
Costume Design, also 2009. Michele also won an RTS Award for her work on
Lasse Hallström Casanova in 2005.
Most recently Michele has worked on all four seasons of the hugely
successful HBO series Game of Thrones and she recently won an Emmy
Award for Outstanding Costumes for a Series in 2012, as well as being
nominated for the same award in 2011. Michele was also nominated for the
Costume Designers Guild Award for Outstanding Period/Fantasy Television
Series in 2012 and 2013 for her work on the first two series’. Her film work
includes Marc Munden’s Miranda, Alex Keshishian’s Love and Other
Disasters, Martha Fiennes’ Chromophobia and Blood with director Nick
Murphy for Neal Street Productions.
Nina Gold (Casting Director)
Nina Gold is one of London's leading independent Casting Directors. Upon
graduating from Cambridge University where she first became involved in
theatre, she began teaching drama in Paris. She is best known for her 14 year
collaboration with Mike Leigh, including Topsy-Turvy, Vera Drake, Happy-GoLucky, Another Year and his revival of Ecstasy at Hampstead Theatre.
Feature film credits include: Alan Rickman’s A Little Chaos, Tom Hooper’s
Les Miserables, Ron Howard's Rush, Ridley Scott's The Counselor and
Prometheus; Sightseers, James Marsh’s Shadowdancer, Phyllida Lloyd’s The
Iron Lady, Oscar-winning The King's Speech directed by Tom Hooper, Cary
Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, Sam Taylor Wood’s
Nowhere Boy, Jane Campion’s Bright Star and Eastern Promises directed by
David Cronenberg. Television credits include: three seasons of Game of
Thrones, Edward Hall’s Restless, Mark Munden’s The Crimson Petal and The
White and The Devils' Whore, Rome and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers
directed by Stephen Hopkins. In 2008, Nina won the Emmy for her casting
work on Tom Hooper’s John Adams.
Melanie Ann Oliver (Editor)
Melanie Ann Oliver was recently nominated for an American Cinema Editors
(ACE) award for her work on Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables and and was
honoured with a BAFTA Award for her work as editor of Hooper's Longford.
She has previously collaborated with director Joe Wright as editor, on recent
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film Anna Karenina, the miniseries Bodily Harm and Bob & Rose, as well as
the award-winning short films The End and Crocodile Snap. Oliver
collaborated as editor with director Shekhar Kapur, of the multi-Emmy and
Golden Globe Award-winning miniseries Elizabeth I, for which she was an
Emmy Award nominee; Tom Hooper’s The Damned United and the multiEmmy and Golden Globe Award-winning miniseries John Adams, for which
she was again an Emmy Award nominee as well as an American
Cinema
Editors (A.C.E.) Eddie Award nominee.
Oliver began her career as Assistant Editor, working on such films as Jane
Campion's An Angel at My Table and The Portrait of a Lady and Anna
Campion's Loaded. Since then, she has been film editor on documentaries,
television commercials, shorts, and features alike. Among
her credits are
Cassian Harrision's BAFTA and Peabody Award-winning documentary,
Beneath the Veil. She has since been the film editor on such features as
Sarah Gavron's Brick Lane; Jon Amiel's Creation; Richard Loncraine's The
Special Relationship and Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga.