The Cast Behind Shutter Island

At the heart of Shutter Island’s suspense and mounting fear is the shattering experience of Teddy Daniels, the hard-bitten war veteran and savvy U.S. Marshal who arrives at the island hospital to investigate the disappearance of a killer, only to slide deeper and deeper into an abyss of dizzying riddles, haunted memories and unrelenting fear. 

As his investigation runs into one obstacle after another, Teddy has reason to believe he is being manipulated, watched, perhaps drugged, and pushed to the dark, indistinct edges of his own sanity. 

Perhaps he is being warned away from getting at the larger truth of Shutter Island, or drawn into a horrific experiment, but there is clearly a hidden agenda tying Teddy to this impenetrable place.
 
To play a character so tightly wound, yet about to unravel in just a few days’ time, the filmmakers had one actor in mind from the start: three-time Academy Award® nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, who has grown up on the screen to become one of today’s most distinctive leading men. 

"When we approached Marty we instantly began thinking about Leo as well, first because he was so right for the part, but also because of his incredibly successful collaboration with Scorsese," Fischer says.
 
Scorsese wholeheartedly backed the choice. "Having worked with Leo on Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed, I thought immediately that he should do this," he says. 

"We have a way of working together now and I had faith and trust in him as an artist to achieve the many psychological and emotional states that Teddy has to reach, and to transform throughout. 

"Have I seen him do this before?  Not to this level, I think.  As he gets older, he goes deeper and deeper."

DiCaprio was convinced as soon as he read the script. "A lot of things about this character appealed to me," he explains. "Teddy comes to Shutter Island devoted to solving a mystery and to uncover what is really going on, but he has his own innermost agenda and secrets. 

"He’s in a situation where there’s a lot more to his journey than there at first appears to be.  One of the great things about the story is that it’s constantly jarring you.  It works on so many different levels; it’s like a giant layer cake."

He continues: "I fell in love with the complexity of Teddy, with his search for the truth, which triggers something in him, and also triggered something in me.  I was profoundly moved at the end."  

He was also drawn to reuniting with Scorsese. "The one thing I don’t think people understand about Scorsese is how much he believes in the actors he hires and how much he depends on them doing their homework before they show up on the set," DiCaprio comments. 

"He’s a master filmmaker and he knows how to navigate the human mind and portray things about the human condition, but he lets the actors really dictate what he puts up on the screen." 

Once he took on the role, DiCaprio was inspired to undertake his own personal research.  He delved into the specialized training of a real 1950s U.S. Marshal, explored the experiences of World War II vets and learned about the psychiatric techniques used in mental institutions during the period.  He also read and re-read Lehane’s novel. 

"When you have someone like Dennis Lehane, who creates such rich characters, it gives you a lot of ammunition and reference points," he says. 

The core of his preparation, though, was a series of long, explorative talks with Scorsese.  "Marty loves to discuss everything at great length," notes DiCaprio, "which helps you become even more specific about who your character is and more believable on the screen. 

"We would discuss the scenes almost like forensic detectives, going through the details with a fine-tooth comb, and that’s one of the most interesting, challenging, scary and fun parts of making his movies because, by the time you’re on set, you’re really committed to something."

In the case of this particular character, those conversations were particularly important.  "With Teddy, there were certain fine lines we couldn’t cross and that was very challenging," DiCaprio explains.

"I really needed Scorsese’s guidance on how far things could be pushed.  There are a lot of extra subtleties you might notice on a second viewing."

Further inspiring DiCaprio was the cast that surrounded him. "There are some remarkable performances, so rich in character detail that they just come alive," he says. "The casting was tremendous and you believe these people you meet on Shutter Island are all real and tangible."

DiCaprio was especially excited to work with Mark Ruffalo, who plays Chuck Aule, Teddy’s new partner who will also be swept up in the mysteries and conspiracies on the rocky isle. "Mark is an actor I’ve wanted to work with for a long time.  He’s given so many fantastic, ultra-realistic performances," he says. 

"His character, Chuck, has an interesting relationship with Teddy.  They are starting to build trust, but are suspicious about each other’s intentions.  Mark really brought something to this film that needed to be there and grounded my character in a profound way."

Ruffalo has emerged as one of today’s most diverse and intriguing leading men, with roles in such films as Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Michael Mann’s Collateral. 

Says Scorsese: "I have wanted to work with Mark since I saw him in You Can Count on Me, which I executive-produced.  What you have with Mark is a strong emotional connection.  He is believable on every level while playing a multi-faceted character."

Ruffalo was drawn by the lure of working with Scorsese and DiCaprio, but it was the screenplay’s unforeseen wallop that really got to him. "At first, you think it’s just an interesting noir detective story but, as you go along, all these surprise events and layers emerge, along with rollercoaster twists and the script turns out to be so many other things you weren’t expecting," he says. 

"Things keep getting stranger and stranger and it slams you into another world.  The more I read, the more I felt that playing Chuck, who has much more going on than we initially see, would be an extraordinary challenge."

That challenge weighed on Ruffalo as he began preparing for the shoot. "There was a problem I had to solve with the part, which was how to walk the fine line of this character," he explains. 

"It appears that Chuck is there to protect Teddy but, deep inside, he’s also pushing him towards a reckoning. There was an interesting tightrope act involved." One of the keys, says Ruffalo, was making sure that his performance would stand up on a second viewing of the film, even after all the story’s carefully built  skeleton of secrets has been exposed. 

"I think on second viewing, there are little clues to what’s really going on, without raising any red flags," says Ruffalo. "It’s all in how I’m listening and responding to certain things, how I’m looking at Leo."

Working with a DiCaprio was a wish fulfilled for Ruffalo.  "I’ve been a fan of his for such a long time," he notes, "and have watched him grow into this great leading man.  I didn’t know what to expect, but what I found is that he is one of the hardest working, most dedicated of actors. 

"He works non-stop, constantly running lines and talking about the characters.  It’s never enough for him and, at the same time, he’s very generous and giving to the other actors.  I found him really impressive."

Ruffalo was further inspired by Scorsese’s enthusiasm. "This film was like a playground for Scorsese’s virtuoso filmmaking," muses Ruffalo. "It’s full of fantasy sequences, flashbacks, period elegance, altered states, film noir and the supernatural, as well as a great character drama. 

"He gets to do everything he’s always loved about film."  He continues: "One of the wonderful things about working with Marty is that he truly does love actors, and he loves to create a work environment with a big playing space where you can take things in many different directions. 

"It was a very collaborative process. We all sat down and talked about the characters.  We also talked about mythology, history and, most of all, about films, using the classics for character insight and a sense of the noir style. 

"There’s a lot going on in every frame on every level, and I think that makes for a very satisfying movie experience."

Also joining in the experience was Academy Award® winner Ben Kingsley, who takes on the role of the brilliant Dr. Cawley, who psychoanalyzes Teddy and Chuck’s every move even as he engages them to find his dangerous, missing patient.

Scorsese had long hoped to work with Kingsley and was thrilled the role suited him so well.  "Ben was a natural for me because of his focus, concentration and compassion. That is what’s so important about the character of Dr. Cawley  his level of dedication and his ability to find something human in his violent patients," says the director. 

Kingsley was pulled in by the story and especially to his character’s underlying, secret mission. "This story is like an archeological dig where you keep finding layers under layers," he says.

"I like that and I like Dr. Cawley because there is some extraordinary stuff buried inside this character that comes to the fore.  He has an interesting perspective on his profession at a period when there was a battle raging between the old therapies and the new drugs and surgical approaches like lobotomies."

In taking on the role, Kingsley brought his own vision of what Dr. Cawley would look like to the set. "It comes from my Shakespeare days that I love to grasp the whole picture," he says. 

"So I chose his green suit and his pipe, as well as his shoes, which are wonderful Oxford rogues that link him to the earth. I think of him as a man with his feet on the ground, but his head in the heights of science."

He especially enjoyed the interplay with the rest of the extraordinary cast. "Leo is at the Hamlet stage of his life and this role gives him a tremendous opportunity to show his depth. Mark Ruffalo just radiates affection and loyalty; Michelle Williams has a stirring, beautiful vulnerability; Emily Mortimer is exquisite, like a bird beating its wings against a window; Patricia Clarkson has such stillness and intelligence and Max von Sydow, with his towering authority, is magnificent," he summarises. 

"Marty has placed them all like a painter, putting one color next to another for great effect.  What a thrilling project to be involved with."

Taking on the key role of Teddy’s wife Dolores is Academy Award® nominee Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain).  Williams did not hesitate to jump into the unusual character. "It’s a really challenging role, which always appeals to me," she says. 

She admits the part got under her skin more than she anticipated. "Playing Dolores was a lot to go through," she continues. "It’s like being in a nightmare you can’t wake up from and it keeps changing and getting darker and darker as you go with the current."

To get deeper into the psychology and truth behind Dolores, Williams did a lot of reading on abnormal psychiatry, watched documentaries and talked to several doctors. "I also talked a lot to Marty," she explains, "because one of the most important things is to build that trust in order to go to these places together."

The period also intrigued Williams. "It was a time in the 1950s when people felt they didn’t know what was going to come next. Dolores was caught up in paranoia about war, about being spied on, about not being safe," she notes. "I had to find compassion for what she was going through."

On camera, what Williams went through was often a drenching affair, flooded with dream-induced deluges. "I spent the two months making this move soaking wet," she laughs. "There were even water rigs in my hair and dress!  But it’s all part of Marty’s storytelling, and it was so exciting to be part of that."

Says DiCaprio of Williams: "Michelle rooted the entire film emotionally with a really engaging, intense performance that goes to the heart of who this couple is."

Dolores isn’t the only woman who haunts Teddy Daniels during his journey to Ashecliffe hospital. 

There is also Rachel Solando, the perilously disturbed murderess whose inexplicable escape brings him to the island in the first place. Rachel appears in two incarnations, played both by Academy Award® nominee Patricia Clarkson (Pieces of April) and rising star Emily Mortimer (Match Point.) 

Says Scorsese of Clarkson: "Her scene with Leo in the cave is one of my favorites in the picture. She is like the Oracle of Delphi. It’s this ritualistic encounter almost like an old myth. Yet, Patricia plays this character straightforwardly.  There are no tricks in there.  She just has got such range as an actor."

Clarkson was deeply intrigued by her character’s role in the grand structure of the story.  "She’s another twist and turn within the film who operates on several levels," she notes. 

"When you hit my character, you think she might be the one who will provide the truth, some solace, the endpoint of the journey, but then you find out that there are many more twists to come. That’s what’s so beautiful about the writing in both the novel and the screenplay."

Another high point for Clarkson was working with DiCaprio. "He makes a total transformation in this character, yet it’s very subtle, fine and beautiful.  I loved working with him because he gives 2,000% on every take," she says.

For Emily Mortimer, her role too was irresistible. "Rachel is a fantastic, daunting role because you never see her sane in the movie," she comments.  "It was also exciting to enter this daring, Gothic, 1950s world Marty conjured up, to journey back into the style of the movies made back then. 

"What I love most about the movie is that it poses a question we all ask ourselves sometimes: Am I mad or is the world around me mad?  It jars your sense of what’s real and what isn’t, and Marty worked that perfectly." 

Scorsese was equally enamored of Mortimer’s performance. "The way she plays Rachel is very moving.  I found myself believing her and her reversal in the role makes it really chilling." 
 
Perhaps the greatest challenge for Mortimer was simply acknowledging that she was part of such an illustrious ensemble. "I was so proud to be a part of this cast, but it was also difficult because here I was having to go mad in front of people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sir Ben Kingsley and Mark Ruffalo, but they were all extremely encouraging and supportive. 

"Leo is an especially generous actor. He made me feel so at ease," she says. "Our characters have an interesting dynamic because there is this constant contrast between what you see on the screen and what’s really going on in the crevices of their minds." 
 
DiCaprio also enjoyed that dynamic. "Emily delivered unbelievably and her character really pushes Teddy’s buttons," he says. 

Another high-impact supporting role is that of Shutter Island inmate George Noyce.  A mysterious face from Teddy’s past, Noyce is played by Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children), another actor Scorsese had wanted to seek out. 

"I thought he was remarkable in Little Children and he was quite interesting to work with," comments the director. "He handled the dialogue with Teddy in fascinating ways.  He shakes Teddy up and it’s one of the highlights of the picture."

Says Haley, who endured intensive makeup to portray the battered Noyce: "It’s such a cool, pivotal scene that George has with Teddy and I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to work so close to Leo while Marty was giving directions. 

"It was a dream come true. In between takes, Marty would come up and tweak and shift and change us and continually make it better."

Rounding out the highly accomplished group of actors in the film’s ensemble is the legendary Max von Sydow (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), who plays Dr. Naehring, one of Ashecliffe’s more ominous and threatening figures. 

Notes Scorsese: "Max von Sydow is a giant of cinema. I think I first saw him in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and his range and experience over the last 50 years has been a part of film history itself. 

"The depth of his control is fascinating to watch.  He had the intelligence and confidence to handle the nature of this man who is an ex-Nazi.  He also represents the other side of the psychiatric profession.  Dr. Naehring is not a villain, but someone who really believes in what he’s doing."

Shutter Island is out now.

At the heart of Shutter Island’s suspense and mounting fear is the shattering experience of Teddy Daniels, the hard-bitten war veteran and savvy U.S. Marshal who arrives at the island hospital to investigate the disappearance of a killer, only to slide deeper and deeper into an abyss of dizzying riddles, haunted memories and unrelenting fear. 

As his investigation runs into one obstacle after another, Teddy has reason to believe he is being manipulated, watched, perhaps drugged, and pushed to the dark, indistinct edges of his own sanity. 

Perhaps he is being warned away from getting at the larger truth of Shutter Island, or drawn into a horrific experiment, but there is clearly a hidden agenda tying Teddy to this impenetrable place.
 
To play a character so tightly wound, yet about to unravel in just a few days’ time, the filmmakers had one actor in mind from the start: three-time Academy Award® nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, who has grown up on the screen to become one of today’s most distinctive leading men. 

"When we approached Marty we instantly began thinking about Leo as well, first because he was so right for the part, but also because of his incredibly successful collaboration with Scorsese," Fischer says.
 
Scorsese wholeheartedly backed the choice. "Having worked with Leo on Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed, I thought immediately that he should do this," he says. 

"We have a way of working together now and I had faith and trust in him as an artist to achieve the many psychological and emotional states that Teddy has to reach, and to transform throughout. 

"Have I seen him do this before?  Not to this level, I think.  As he gets older, he goes deeper and deeper."

DiCaprio was convinced as soon as he read the script. "A lot of things about this character appealed to me," he explains. "Teddy comes to Shutter Island devoted to solving a mystery and to uncover what is really going on, but he has his own innermost agenda and secrets. 

"He’s in a situation where there’s a lot more to his journey than there at first appears to be.  One of the great things about the story is that it’s constantly jarring you.  It works on so many different levels; it’s like a giant layer cake."

He continues: "I fell in love with the complexity of Teddy, with his search for the truth, which triggers something in him, and also triggered something in me.  I was profoundly moved at the end."  

He was also drawn to reuniting with Scorsese. "The one thing I don’t think people understand about Scorsese is how much he believes in the actors he hires and how much he depends on them doing their homework before they show up on the set," DiCaprio comments. 

"He’s a master filmmaker and he knows how to navigate the human mind and portray things about the human condition, but he lets the actors really dictate what he puts up on the screen." 

Once he took on the role, DiCaprio was inspired to undertake his own personal research.  He delved into the specialized training of a real 1950s U.S. Marshal, explored the experiences of World War II vets and learned about the psychiatric techniques used in mental institutions during the period.  He also read and re-read Lehane’s novel. 

"When you have someone like Dennis Lehane, who creates such rich characters, it gives you a lot of ammunition and reference points," he says. 

The core of his preparation, though, was a series of long, explorative talks with Scorsese.  "Marty loves to discuss everything at great length," notes DiCaprio, "which helps you become even more specific about who your character is and more believable on the screen. 

"We would discuss the scenes almost like forensic detectives, going through the details with a fine-tooth comb, and that’s one of the most interesting, challenging, scary and fun parts of making his movies because, by the time you’re on set, you’re really committed to something."

In the case of this particular character, those conversations were particularly important.  "With Teddy, there were certain fine lines we couldn’t cross and that was very challenging," DiCaprio explains.

"I really needed Scorsese’s guidance on how far things could be pushed.  There are a lot of extra subtleties you might notice on a second viewing."

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