Fifteen-year-old Megan Burns never thought she would get the part of Hannah, the quiet but confident daughter of Frank. “I tried to be myself in the audition but thought I didn’t get it because everyone was so different from me,” says Burns. Boyle had seen Burns in LIAM, for which she won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, but it was her audition that proved she was right for the part. “She just had incredible truthful quality about her, which is really beautiful. A very simple, beautiful quality, very un-pushy - a kind of radiance which I loved about her,” explains Boyle.
For Burns’ part she had to lie on the ground under the cab while a mass of rats ran over her. “When I read the script about the rats I thought, no, they won’t run over my face or anything and then on the day, I realized I was wrong. I not only had to lie there but had to hold the rats on my face as they kept running away and Danny kept whispering ‘Don’t worry they’re clean rats. They’ve all been shampooed this morning!’”
For the supporting soldiers' roles, a talented group of young men were cast. Leo Bill as Jones, Ricci Harnett as Mitchell, Stuart McQuarrie as Farrell, Marvin Campbell as Mailer, Sanjay Rambaruth as Davis, Ray Panthaki as Bedford, Junior Laniyan as Bell, and lastly Luke Mably as Clifton. Although they are in the film for a short period of time, Boyle wanted audiences to identify with them all and see them as a community. “They are a great bunch of very exciting young prospects for future films,” enthuses Boyle. “There are at least two potential movie stars in there. I dare not say which two of course!”
To prepare for their roles, the soldiers, including Eccleston, were sent to boot camp for the weekend. “I knew the rhythm and routine of the army would be valuable to them, to get it right so they looked and behaved like soldiers, and it worked really well,” says Boyle. The actors attended lectures from ex-SAS soldiers and did military exercises. “We learned about the basic things of handling your rifle, making sure the rifle becomes part of you,” Eccleston explains. “We fired off live rounds and I used both the machine gun and then a mounted machine gun, which to be honest I found pretty frightening. We didn’t have a great deal of time but we packed a lot in learning a little bit how to move like a soldier and obviously how to think like a soldier”. The camp also helped the actors feel like a unit. “Actors do that very easily anyway, you know, that’s one of the great things about being an actor, you’re used to chipping up somewhere and creating the camaraderie, and we did that very quickly”, continues Eccleston. “I think in some ways it was good for those soldiers who came in and trained us, because actors are open, and they’re willing to have a go and they can pick up skills quite quickly because that’s what you have to do. And it’s well cast and there’s a good feeling among us. Hopefully what the soldiers will bring will be a different kind of humanity, different problems, and character problems. There’s a lot that’s decent in the men that we’re portraying, we hope, rather than being just, you know, faceless authority.”
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