Still on a high from his career renaissance, Jackie Earle Haley experienced a throng of screaming fans and his own reaction to the first footage from Watchmen. Haley plays Rorschach.
Jackie Earle Haley is Rorschach
"It's kind of scary, right?" Haley said. "I mean, it felt great. When my agent called and said, 'Hey, man, I have some bad news for you and some good news. What would you like to hear first?' I said, 'Give me the bad news.' He goes, 'You're not going to be doing the Clint Eastwood movie because you're going to be doing the Watchmen.' It's just an incredible role, an incredible property. The source material is absolutely amazing."
Not that it's an easy gig. "The only thing about it is that everyone has such an idea in their heads about what this guy and what he sounds like and all of that. So I had a very strong sense of responsibility and accountability, but you have to go in there and work with your director and get after it and make decisions and give it your best. That's what we did and so hopefully it'll be what people envisioned this guy to be."
Sometimes Haley just marveled at his costars in character. "We were walking around the halls of the production office and I'd only seen [Jeffrey Dean Morgan] maybe once or twice, at the most, but we'd kind of met and I kept walking past all these people, but there was this older producer guy who I hadn't met yet. I was kind of busy and so I didn't walk up to him and kept walking by. I must've passed him three or four times and he finally looked over at me and said, 'Jackie.' I looked over and I didn't recognize Jeffrey. I recognized The Comedian. He was in the old guy make-up."
That must be some makeup job, because it worked on Haley for a while. "For the longest time I really got used to the fact that he kind of looked that way because for the next month or so he was always in the old guy outfit. Even out in the daylight I would be standing this close talking and it just looked so real and it felt like he really kind of embodied this sixty-three year old. It was so believable just standing there talking to him. Somewhere along the line he started playing the younger character and then I got to know Jeffrey as he really exits."
Watchmen opens to theaters March 6th, 2009.
For the posters, trailer, stills and more info on the film, go to the Watchmen
Movie Page.
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