Eager and able to perform many of his own stunts, Bennett was admittedly “bummed out whenever there were things I wasn’t allowed to do,” but still managed a lot of swimming. “I can hold my breath a long time,” he says. “I can do two laps in a row without breathing.”
Because of Maggie’s focus on her son and her work to the exclusion of a personal life, Barrett notes that, “when she meets Dylan at the New Year’s Eve party it kind of blindsides her,” their natural attraction being “something she was not looking for and hasn’t felt in a long time. What charms her most is how Dylan connects with Conor.” That connection is partly what prompts her and her son to take a chance on following Dylan out of the ballroom. But Maggie is cautious, and will take the full measure of this man before she really trusts him.
Best known to audiences as Nadia Santos on the popular series Alias, Argentinean native Mia Maestro stars as the shy but courageous stowaway Elena, a woman with a deeply held faith. Bound for New York to see her brother in the hospital but unable to pay the fare, Elena was offered covert passage by her friend Valentin, one of the ship’s waiters, played by Freddy Rodriguez. After the ship turns over, she finds herself among the few survivors in the disco and tries to help a frantic Jennifer pull Christian free from heavy debris. When Ramsey and the others reach the disco, Elena joins them in their continuing climb.
Lonely herself, Elena soon forms a special bond with Nelson, who in turns helps her through the worst moments of their journey, traversing a dark and narrow duct that touches off Elena’s claustrophobia in a panic attack that threatens to turn her back.
“It’s a very touching film,” Maestro observes, “because you are watching what happens to these individuals in a life-and-death situation. In times like that people do things they would never think themselves capable of doing. They’re on the borderline, physically and psychologically and it’s a very interesting place.”
Maestro had both SCUBA diving and underwater acting experience prior to working on the set of Poseidon. For her, the wire work proved more daunting. “The first time is the toughest,” she admits. “Even though you know, rationally, you’re not going to die and we had an amazing group of stunt supervisors, it was still easy to get a little bit of vertigo looking down. What happens ultimately is that you just go with it.”
Like Vogel, she found Petersen’s impromptu classical concerts soothing and inspiring. One survivor who remains behind in the sunken ballroom, Captain Bradford, is played by stage and screen star Andre Braugher. Currently headlining the new FX series Thief, Braugher earned an Emmy Award for his portrayal of lead detective Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street and nominations for both Gideon’s Crossing and the acclaimed HBO miniseries The Tuskegee Airmen. Although the captain’s choice is dictated by duty, Braugher understands him to be the kind of man who would remain behind to lend comfort to the trapped and injured even if he had the option to flee.
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