Snyder cast an eclectic net to find the actors he needed to portray the characters. Meet the “masks” of the film…
Zack Snyder, director : “We cast based on character. The studio wasn't crazy about that, but based on what we'd done with 300, they were okay with it. I needed the money for the movie!”
Carla Gugino, Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre : “She's a superhero and a pinup in a Bettie Page style, who has something terrible happen to her. She spans from 25 years old to 67 with full prosthetics and she's an alcoholic mother who is trying to live her life through her daughter.”
Malin Ackerman, Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II : “I was the unexpected daughter. At first she thought it was cool and fun but where we begin in the story of the Watchmen novel, she is breaking off from her old life and trying to find her own identity. And so it's a journey, a coming of age with just a little fighting in between!”
Patrick Wilson, Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl : “Dan Dreiberg is a guy who grew up with a lot of money. He took the reigns from the first Night Owl and enjoyed a short span fighting crime, but when we find all these guys, they're retired and Dan is trying to find his way back into society.”
Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Edward Blake/The Comedian: “We’re introduced to him with his death. But you find out through flashbacks he started cleaning up the crime in the docks of New York back in the day. It's an alternate reality where there were superheroes until something called the Keane Act is passed and they're outlawed.”
Jackie Earle Haley, Walter Kovacs: “The idea of Rorschach is kind of impossible - it drove me a little nuts trying to stare into that abyss, looking for answers as to who this guy is. Because of his troubled childhood, he's got a very black and white sense of justice.”
Billy Crudup, John Osterman/Dr Manhattan: “He starts out as physicist Dr John Osterman, gets zapped in a particle accelerator and is completely annihilated. But his consciousness somehow remains intact and he uses that to piece together. In the process of that becomes a master of matter and of the physics of the world.”
Matthew Goode, Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias: "He runs a global empire selling basically memorabilia about himself. He’s the smartest man in the world, and he has this plan to save the planet, which is in very real likelihood of ending up with nuclear war. So Adrian is the villain of the piece, but he's trying to save the world.”
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