British-born Christian Bale also had a new accent to learn: that of a monied young New Yorker who is cultivating a tough, violent attitude. Bale had already mastered a similar vocal pattern for his previous feature film, "American Psycho," and developed it further for "Shaft." He even made sure to keep the accent between scenes while chatting on the set with the cast and crew.
"I’m sure people just thought, ‘Oh God, it’s an actor being a wanker, as usual,’" Bale laughs. "But I found that it worked best for me to maintain the accent the whole time. I didn’t like having to think about the accent once the camera was rolling. Half the time, I would have been thinking about whether I sounded right. So I tended to just keep up the accent the whole time, all day long."
Australia’s Toni Collette, best known to American audiences for her Oscar®-nominated role as the mother in "The Sixth Sense," portrays Diane Palmieri, the terrified Italian-American waitress who witnessed a violent murder and went on the run.
"What I liked about the character of Diane," she explains, "is the emotional core within her. She’s highly imperfect. She doesn’t like herself, and it changes her on every level because obviously what’s going to be on the inside will manifest itself in different ways externally. Basically, it cuts her off from life. When Shaft turns up, he scares the life out of her. Her relationship with him is one that starts out in a pool of mistrust. He has to make her trust him, to see that he’s a real person and that he wants the right thing to be done."
In the key role of Rasaan, Shaft’s streetwise buddy, is rap impresario, Busta Rhymes. "I’m Shaft’s right-hand man," he says, "and I’m pretty much the guy Shaft can’t be because he’s a cop. Shaft has to go about things in the right way, to follow the legal procedure to solve crimes and deal with thugs. Rasaan can assist him in a very unorthodox street way. And that allows Shaft to do his job that much more efficiently."
An established figure in the music industry, Rhymes has been branching out increasingly into acting, appearing in "Higher Learning," "Who’s the Man" and other film and TV productions.
"It’s a super blast of an opportunity for me," he says. "I just want to be able to show people that Busta Rhymes has a whole lot to offer on every level. My experience from this film has definitely taken me much further in what I want to accomplish."
Making a cameo appearance in "Shaft" is director Gordon Parks, who guided the creation of the original "Shaft" and who is revered by generations of filmmakers. "Gordon Parks is somebody I’ve modeled my life after," says Singleton. "It was very important to me to have Gordon Parks in this film."
Parks’ appearance (he can be seen seated at a table in a sequence at Harlem’s Lenox Lounge) is, in fact, an echo of the cameo he made in the original "Shaft" 30 years ago.
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