Suddenly Miranda finds herself "on the other side of the glass," confined with the highly irrational patients she used to treat with methodical detachment. Meanwhile, she is subject to mind-numbing medication and the palpable mistrust of her former colleagues while she desperately tries to discover the truth behind her husband’s brutal murder in order to prove her innocence…or accept the consequences of her inexplicable actions.
"There’s a great line in the movie where Miranda says I don’t believe in ghosts but they believe in me," Silver reveals. "As she tries to make sense of her disturbing encounters with a vengeful spirit, Miranda begins to believe that maybe the patients who say they hear voices really do hear voices."
Silver envisioned Academy Award-winning actress Halle Berry in the physically and emotionally demanding role of Miranda. "Besides being gifted and beautiful, Halle brings depth and emotional range to every character she plays, and I knew she could
really shine as Miranda," says Silver, who cast Berry in one of her first film roles, opposite Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans in The Last Boy Scout, and reunited with her on the hit action thrillers Executive Decision and Swordfish. "This character takes an incredible journey, and Halle has the talent and stamina to take Miranda to some very dark places along the way."
"When Joel sent me the script, it jumped off the page for me," says Berry, the 2002 Best Actress Oscar winner for her tour de force performance in Monsters Ball. "Miranda is so compelling – she’s complicated, intelligent and caught a truly terrifying situation. From the first page, I was immersed in Miranda’s journey of self-discovery, and I loved it."
Berry describes Miranda as "a tortured soul" who discovers the depth of her strength and intuitive skills when she is stripped of her identity. "At the beginning of the story, she’s living life by the numbers rather than living life to the fullest," says the actress, whose mother worked as a nurse in a psychiatric ward for 35 years. "The journey that Miranda takes throughout the movie inspires her to wake up and take a look at what’s around her, and she starts living in a more visceral way than she has ever lived before."
Although Miranda’s painful transition from judicious doctor to seemingly self-destructive mental patient is specific to her extreme circumstances, Berry believes her character’s predicament is one audiences can identify with. "Miranda is not alone," she cautions. "Any one of us could be in the same position that she finds herself in. Things are going along just beautifully and, in a single night, the course of your life is changed forever.
"This movie is all about the What if?" Berry elaborates. "What if this happened to you? What would you do? How would you find your way out? Could you find your way out? Would you give up, would you survive or would you die trying?"
Movie Database
In Theaters
