Xun Zhou

Based on the novel by David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas was adapted for the screen and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer.

The film features a very strong ensemble, including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Xun Zhou, Keith David, David Gyasi, with Susan Sarandon and Hugh Grant.

One of the film’s unique aspects is that every single member of Cloud Atlas’s cast turns up in multiple roles to bring to life the myriad characters that inhabit six storylines spread over 500 years.

Tykwer says of the casting: “As we discussed the ties between characters that occur over time, and the ways in which it sometimes seems one person fulfills what another had begun hundreds of years earlier, we thought: ‘Why couldn’t it be the same actor following through? Why not cast the film based on the idea that each actor portrays not an individual role, but several roles that, together, represent the evolution of a single being?’”

A unique aspect is that every single member of the cast turns up in multiple roles

Hanks plays six different roles in the film, including a treacherous doctor and a criminal Irishman.

“The characters,” he says, “are often witnessing something that could change their lives forever and they have to act. They can be heroes or cowards.”

“This was truly a one-of-a-kind filmmaking experience,” says Berry, who also takes on six characters, including a German Jew and, on one occasion, a man. She starts out as a native woman at the mercy of colonialists and her characters become stronger and more independent until her final incarnation as a higher being. “As an actor, that’s a thrilling prospect and a huge challenge.” At the same time, she says, “People are just people. And they will always be, no matter the circumstances or the time.”

Among Sarandon’s roles are unrecognisable appearances as an Indian man and spiritual leader in the far-flung future, as well as her more familiar self in the 2012 segment.

“It’s a fabulous filmmaking experiment, an epic, adult film about epic, adult ideas and what filmmaking is all about,” says Sarandon.

“It’s one of those rare scripts you read where you don’t know, three pages in, what’s going to happen.”

“The whole approach is adventurous and ambitious and refuses to go down formulaic lines,” adds Grant, who says he particularly relished the way he was cast against type.

Each cast member was clearly as enthusiastic as the next over the project and the challenges it brought them. “Having each of us play multiple parts was an inspired idea,” says Broadbent. Whishaw notes that this is why he became an actor in the first place.

“The instinct is always there to be transformative and this has been an amazing opportunity for that.”

At the cast read-through, Lana Wachowski recalls Weaving, who boasts a dictatorial female nurse among his parts, commenting that “the story demands the characters act with courage and faith and that is also true of everyone here in this room”.

The filmmakers’ decision for the actors to blur racial, gender and age lines – with black actors playing white, Asian actors playing Western people, and vice-versa – has led to some controversy and accusations of racism, but the end result belies this, and the exercise certainly wouldn’t have been as effective had different actors played the respective roles.

As Sarandon explains, the film “is just one of the ways cinema gives you the chance to take on the perspective of a character you thought you had nothing in common with and, in the process, see how alike we are and how little time, age, colour and gender really mean in the scheme of things”.

Which is ultimately one of the messages Cloud Atlas wants to convey.