The only actor who beat Christopher Nolan’s security: “I’m not even sure how he got the script”
Christopher Nolan has always found a way to assemble the most surprising actors when casting his films, creating an ensemble of iconic performers that add depth and individuality to each project. Whether it be Heath Ledger’s iconic reprisal of the Joker, John David Washington in Tenet or Guy Pearce in Memento, the director has always fleshed out each story world with a staggering level of star power to match the complexity of the narrative.
There has been endless buzz around his highly anticipated adaptation of The Odyssey, in which Nolan hand-picked Tom Holland to star in the lead role. Many deemed this decision controversial, given his previous work in the Marvel franchise. But despite the discourse around this choice, Nolan has always chosen the right people for the part—or perhaps the right people have found him.
From Inception’s dizzying logic to Interstellar’s enduring humanity, Nolan has become the poster boy for a certain type of commercial cinema deemed as high-brow, with hordes of fanboys flocking to the cinema each time he drops a new project. Even if we can’t really understand it, this has become the defining principle of his work, with people marvelling at the visual spectacles contained in each film and the mind-bending rules that have changed the nature of mainstream cinema.
However, the director had humble beginnings in the industry as an independent filmmaker, with the success of Memento launching him onto the map and leading to the likes of Insomnia and The Prestige. While both projects are considered instrumental in his journey to the top of the industry, leading him to become one of the most in-demand directors and poster boys for capitalist filmmaking, The Prestige was pivotal in honing the style that he is celebrated for today, with the project evolving in an unexpected and serendipitous way.
When casting the 2006 film, there were two lead roles up for grabs that were being sought after by many men in the industry who were dying to work with the emerging director. However, while one of the roles went to Hugh Jackman, the other was pursued by Christian Bale, with the actor mysteriously finding a copy of the script despite not being sent it. While this security breach proved to be most fruitful for Nolan, who eventually cast him in the lead role, it also led to some questions about how he had got his hands on the script.
Nolan described his intrigue over this bizarre twist of fate, saying, “Christian actually just called out of the blue. I’m not even sure how he got the script, but in the intervening years, the script had kind of made the rounds. He called me up and said he’d be interested to play Borden, which seems exactly right. It’s kind of unthinkable now, anyone else doing that.”
As Nolan describes, this practice is not particularly common in the industry, with very few actors finding their way into roles by simply calling up the director and asking for it. Perhaps this is a method of the past, and Nolan’s scripts now have heavy layers of security that prevent them from being leaked and ‘shared around’, which perhaps became common practice after Bale’s strange acquirement of The Prestige.
