Production Companies Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, DC Comics (Vertigo), Lonely Film Productions GmbH & Co. KG., Donners' Company, Branded Entertainment/Batfilm Productions, Weed Road Pictures, 3 Art Entertainment, Di Bonaventura Pictures
Goldsman credits Will Smith for LaBeouf’s casting, recalling their recent work together on last year’s sci-fi feature I, Robot, for which Smith and LaBeouf starred and Goldsman shared screenplay credit. “Will came up to me while we were working on the film and said ‘this kid is great.’ So we tested him for the Chaz role and it was genius. Then I got to sound very smart by saying, ‘this kid is great.’”
For the role of Gabriel, God’s angelic representative on Earth, Lawrence came to the project not only with a fresh approach in mind but the perfect actress to execute it: Tilda Swinton, whose internationally acclaimed body of work includes standout performances in Orlando and Adaptation as well as a 2002 Golden Globe nomination for The Deep End.
As an angelic being, even in human form, Gabriel transcends gender. Lawrence wanted to represent the character as neither dominantly male or female and sought to accomplish this partly by casting a woman, dressed in traditional male clothing; but the costume would only take the impression so far, the crucial element being the performance itself. Not only would Swinton need to project Gabriel’s innate ambiguity in many forms, including gender, she would also have to be powerful, luminous and remote; not an easy interpretation.
“I liked the idea of Gabriel’s androgynous nature,” she says. “By the time the filmmakers spoke with me they had stopped talking about taking the character into either a masculine or feminine direction and had settled on a median, and we focused on how best to achieve that. Clearly, I didn’t want to look like one of the models from the Robert Palmer video.” Far from that, as Shuler Donner attests, “Tilda brings great elegance and class to the role, as well as a measure of sympathy, which is not easy considering the circumstances. Constantine calls Gabriel ‘the snob,’ and sees him as arrogant and uncaring.”
“As God’s gatekeeper on Earth,” Swinton explains, “Gabriel is the only entity Constantine can petition directly for a way to avoid going to hell. But each time he pleads his case the answer is the same: no. You need faith to enter heaven and Constantine is disqualified because faith is about belief without proof.”
Pruitt Taylor Vince takes on the role of one of Constantine’s few true friends, Father Hennessy. Once a strong and vital clergyman, Hennessy is now a damaged soldier in the battle between good and evil and relies on Constantine to perform the arduous exorcisms for which he no longer has the strength. But his years of experience have given the weary priest an acute sensitivity to otherworldly vibrations in the atmosphere. In return for Constantine’s help, Hennessy provides him a unique early warning system, “surfing the ether” for signs of demonic activity and subtle changes in the balance.
An Emmy Award winner for his portrayal of a killer in the mini-series Murder One: Diary of a Serial Killer, Vince warmed to the character immediately upon reading the script, even before knowing that Father Hennessy was the part the filmmakers had in mind for him. “I like flawed characters,” he reveals, taking note of the good father’s propensity for alcohol, among other things. “I prefer my heroes a little moody, darker, having a bad day.
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