Like Vick and the other tenants, Reggie is looking for meaning in his life. His search has led him to focus on a unique bodybuilding goal that has rendered the right half of his body four and a half inches bigger than his left side. “Reggie’s a guy who’s experimenting on himself,” says Freddy Rodriguez, who recently appeared in Wolfgang Petersen’s Poseidon and is widely known for his role as a consummate mortician on the Emmy award-winning series Six Feet Under. “He’s kind of a loner. He’s friendly, but the other tenants don’t really take him seriously.”
It required approximately three hours a day to apply prosthetics and makeup to Rodriguez, who was outfitted with a sleeve-like wrist-to-shoulder piece on his arm, and a prosthetic leg and thigh. Multiple appliances were created from the actor’s body casts, as the single-use prosthetics had to literally be cut off of Rodriguez at the end of each shooting day.
Mary Beth Hurt, the versatile actress whose recent film credits include The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Family Man, plays Mrs. Bell, whose affinity for animals makes her more attuned to the non-human world around her. “Mrs. Bell is a woman who has a great life force,” Hurt observes. “She knows that Cleveland is hurting and feels a connection with him. Maureen Stapleton, as an actress, always struck me as an open wound, and I think there’s some of that to Cleveland. If you’re as attuned to people as Mrs. Bell is, you empathize with their pain and want to help.”
Despite his indifference to the world beyond his television and his skepticism about Story, Mr. Leeds sees through Cleveland’s stoop-shouldered diligence. “They’re kindred souls,” says Bill Irwin, who has appeared in films such as The Manchurian Candidate and Igby Goes Down. “Like Cleveland, Mr. Leeds has suffered some terrible loss, but his reaction is to watch television, encase himself in books and never leave his place. I think he’s a little jealous of Cleveland, because even though Cleveland is wounded, even though he stutters and keeps his eyes down, Cleveland is out in the world. Mr. Leeds recognizes the bravery in that.”
The Lady in the Water ensemble also features Jared Harris as the Goateed Smoker; June Kyoko Lu as Young-Soon’s mother, Mrs. Choi; Noah Gray-Cabey as Joey Dury; Tovah Feldshuh as Mrs. Bubchik; and Tom Mardirosian as Mr. Bubchik.
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