Salles summarizes: “I see the child in this film as really being the moral center. She accepts things that nobody else accepts. She sees things that nobody else sees. In a sense, she does what an artist is supposed to do in the world: bring to light the things that others don’t see.”
To truly bring DARK WATER to life, Walter Salles knew it would all hinge on the actress who plays Dahlia, a fiercely protective young mother trying to raise her daughter in safety despite an angry ex-husband and a deeply alienating urban world that threatens to upend them. Even when Dahlia thinks she has done everything possible to keep her daughter from harm— whisking her off to an isolated and anonymous apartment building on New York’s Roosevelt Island—comes a series of strange and disturbing events that will put them in a kind of danger that is beyond her imagining, forcing her to question the very reality around her. Salles knew he would need an actress capable of swinging across a pendulum of emotions—from unceasing maternal love to uncertain despair to petrified shock—and also someone earthy, intelligent and very real; that is, the last type of person one would expect to ever come to believe in the supernatural.
In searching for a woman with the sophistication to accomplish all this, the filmmakers arrived at Jennifer Connelly, who won the Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the wife of a brilliant but disturbed mathematician in “A Beautiful Mind.” Salles had been especially impressed with Connelly’s intense and terrifying performance as a drug addict in Darren Aranofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream,” but there was another reason the actress proved perfect for the role. Connelly not only possessed the consummate acting skills and strong personality required but had a six-month-old child at the time, heightening her maternal instincts to palpable levels.
“Walter felt it was very important to have a mother play Dahlia—he felt it was essential that we find an actress who could understand in her soul that bond between mother and child, and this quality really shows in Jennifer’s powerful performance,” says Ashley Kramer.
Jennifer Connelly was intrigued by the mystery and complexity of the story but admits she did have a little trepidation about entering such nightmare-inducing territory. “I have always been very affected by horror stories and am a little afraid of them,” she comments. “But this story, being about a woman trying to make a new life for herself and her daughter in the middle of some very strange circumstances, was really moving to me. I was fascinated by the combination of a story that could be so frightening and yet so emotionally provocative at the same time.”
She continues: “I really related to Dahlia—maybe not the supernatural things that happen to her in the apartment, but the hopes and fears she has about raising her daughter. It’s interesting to me how these little things that start as everyday annoyances, like a leaky ceiling, turn into something so terribly huge and scary. Reality and nightmares start to merge. After all, it is a truly frightening thing to end a marriage and go out into the world and try to start your life all over again in a new city—and that’s very real—but then Dahlia descends into something even more frightening and surreal.”
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