Kinnear, in turn, says, "I had seen Neil's work, and was an admirer of his. The story was unique and had a very specific voice to it. Also, Renee and I had met a while ago, and here was a chance to work with her. The relationship that Betty and my character (Dr. David Ravell/actor George McCord) have in the story is really strange.. .the stakes are constantly going up between them throughout the film."
"General Hospital" producer and director Shelly Curtis was retained as soap opera technical adviser. Her expert opinion of the scripting of "A Reason to Love"? "It's just slightly over the top," she says.
Kinnear visited Curtis' workplace: "I hung out for a couple of days on the set of 'General Hospital,' and I watched quite a few as well. It seemed to me that the people on these shows work very hard -- it's not easy work. I mean, they take these implausible storylines and, quite often, they just about pull them off. They've got to do a lot of pages, five days a week -- and at the same time hit perfect marks and do all the physical business of acting. They earned my respect quickly."
Rock took the direct approach to researching his role as a hit man: "I killed people. I literally went on a killing spree."
Freeman kept things simpler for his hit man portrayal, opting for "no research. Parts that are not technically demanding don't require research... Everything the actor needs is in the script."
However, to better understand the seismic psychological shifts that her character undergoes, Zellweger undertook "a lot of reading, and a lot of phone calls. Gail Mutrux helped me quite a bit, and we talked to different psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and professors of psychology."
"The trick of the movie is, to enter Betty's reality," comments Mutrux. "You stop passing judgment on the character and start believing that this could happen." In their research, Mutrux and Zellweger found that what happens to their fictional Betty is documented fact.
Zellweger explains, "Initially, Betty is generous to a fault, and she doesn't take care of herself. She dreams of a better life for herself, but she's too kind to step on other people to get where she wants to go. Then she witnesses a traumatic event, and falls into a state called 'dissociative fugue': the mind protects the conscious mind after experiencing an unmanageable emotional trauma, and allows the individual to continue to function by taking on a new identity and also by the inability to recall one's past. When she falls into this fugue, suddenly she has a little moxie, and she's ready to get in the car and go chase after what she's always wanted. In that state, she finds the strength to go after her dreams. It's Betty -- with a new reality."
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