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From acclaimed filmmakers Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski

comes the powerful and inspiring epic “Cloud Atlas,” based on the best-selling novel by David

Mitchell.

Drama, mystery, action and enduring love thread through a single story that unfolds in

multiple timelines over the span of 500 years. Characters meet and reunite from one life to the

next. Born and reborn.

As the consequences of their actions and choices impact one another through the past, the

present and the distant future, one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and a single act of

kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution.

Everything is connected.

Academy Award® winners Tom Hanks (“Philadelphia,” “Forrest Gump”) and Halle

Berry (“Monster’s Ball”) lead a stellar international cast that also includes Oscar® winner Jim

Broadbent (“Iris”), Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy,

Xun Zhou, Keith David and David Gyasi, with Oscar®

winner Susan Sarandon (“Dead Man

Walking”) and Hugh Grant. Each member of the ensemble appears in multiple roles as the story

moves through time.

The film is written for the screen and directed by Lana Wachowski & Tom Tykwer &

Andy Wachowski. The Wachowskis previously teamed as writers/directors of the

groundbreaking “Matrix” trilogy; Tom Tykwer won an Independent Spirit Award and earned a

BAFTA Award nomination as the director/writer of “Run Lola Run,” and more recently directed

the award-winning thriller “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.”

Based on the celebrated best-selling novel by David Mitchell, “Cloud Atlas” is produced

by two-time Oscar® nominee Grant Hill (“The Thin Red Line,” “The Tree of Life”), three-time

BAFTA Award nominee Stefan Arndt (“The White Ribbon,” “Goodbye Lenin!,” “Run Lola

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Run”), Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski. Philip Lee, Uwe Schott and

Wilson Qiu serve as executive producers, with co-producers Peter Lam, Tony Teo and

Alexander van Dülmen, and Gigi Oeri as associate producer.

The creative filmmaking team includes directors of photography John Toll and Frank

Griebe; production designers Uli Hanisch and Hugh Bateup; editor Alexander Berner; costume

designers Kym Barrett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud; and visual effects supervisor Dan Glass.

The music is composed by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil.

Warner Bros. Pictures presents a Cloud Atlas Production/X-Filme Creative Pool and

Anarchos Production, in association with A Company and ARD Degeto, “Cloud Atlas.” The

film will be distributed in North America, the UK, France, Spain, Australia and Japan by Warner

Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Concurrently with its North American release in standard theaters, “Cloud Atlas” will

appear in select IMAX® theatres, digitally re-mastered into the IMAX format.

It will be released in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland by X Verleih;

in China by Dreams of the Dragon Pictures; in Hong Kong by Media Asia Group; in Singapore

and Malaysia by Ascension Pictures; in Korea by Bloomage Company; in Taiwan by Long

Shong Group; in Russia and Eastern Europe by A Company; and in other territories through

Focus Features International. cloudatlasmovie.com

“Cloud Atlas” is rated R by the MPAA for violence, language,

sexuality/nudity and some drug use.

For downloadable general press information,

please visit: http://press.warnerbros.com

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ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

“Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others.

Past and present. And by each crime, and every kindness,

we birth our future.” – Sonmi-451, 2144

An ambitious and dazzling epic spanning five centuries, “Cloud Atlas” explores

questions about life and purpose that humanity has contemplated since the beginning of

conscious thought. With a kaleidoscopic array of action, emotion and urgent human connections

that lights points along an infinite timeline, it suggests that individual lives continue their

personal trajectories through the ages. Souls, reborn, renew their bonds with one another, time

and again. Mistakes can be rectified…or repeated. Freedom can be gained or lost, but is forever

sought.

And always, love survives.

“The scale of its ideas is what we were instantly attracted to, its compassion for human

beings, its boldness and audacity and the way it felt simultaneously classic and yet completely

new,” says Lana Wachowski one of the film’s three writer/directors who adapted the award-

wining David Mitchell novel on which it is based. “Thematically, it transcends boundaries of

race and gender, location and time, and tells a story that implies the nature of humanity is beyond

all those boundaries. That’s what intrigued us when we read the novel and then when we started

working on the script.”

Filmmakers and longtime friends Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer had often

thought about working together, but it was their passion for Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas that finally

galvanized the three into action. Befitting its unconventional storyline, they formed a truly

unique creative alliance to share writing and directing efforts in bringing this book that has been

hailed as a modern masterpiece to the big screen.

“It strikes so many powerful notes,” says Tykwer. “There’s truth to be found in simple,

individual observations that anyone can relate to, but, by setting those moments into a broader

dramatic context and with the sweep of time, you see the human condition in a fascinating way.”

Encompassing a range of genres and set simultaneously in the past, present and future,

“Cloud Atlas” illustrates how events and decisions made by the people in one period can

reverberate in unforeseeable ways across the timeline to touch the lives of others.

A San Francisco attorney harbors a fleeing slave on a fateful voyage home from the

Pacific Islands in 1849…a poor, gifted composer in pre-World War II Britain struggles to

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complete his magnum opus before the cost of a reckless act catches up with him…a journalist in

1973 works to avert an industrial disaster…a present-day publisher, on the eve of his greatest

success, faces unjust imprisonment…a genetically engineered worker in the year 2144 feels the

forbidden awakening of human consciousness…and in the ravaged far-off future of the 2300s, a

goat herder battles his conscience over what he has done to stay alive. Each scenario is

introduced, then unfolds alongside the others, while fluid transitions from one to another reveal

the ways in which they are all linked.

It soon becomes clear that these are not separate stories, but moments captured from a

single flow. “The key is to abandon the idea that it’s six stories. It’s one,” Andy says. “Each of

the pieces and time periods reflects upon the others throughout the movie. As all these souls

evolve, you see the connections between them, and follow their chronologic progress.”

Likewise, each character is part of an ensemble that eternally returns and regroups in new

identities and circumstances. “It’s not just one person; it’s all the major characters in each of the

worlds,” offers author David Mitchell. “The relationships between them and the nature of those

relationships also evolve. In a universe where reincarnation is possible and a film where the

past, present and future co-exist, death is just one door closing and another door opening.”

In this way, conflicts arising in one era may be resolved lifetimes later, injustices

revisited—with often surprising results—and lovers can mature together through the centuries.

“Part of the movie is a great love story that moves through different lives, but you see it in

moments, not all at once,” Lana reveals, referring to the way in which a couple’s young love can

grow and influence their actions via repeated encounters through time. “This is another of its

themes—that love can alter the direction of your life at any time.”

Other forces are also in play. Tom Hanks, who appears in six roles, representing the

journey of a single soul through points along the continuum, observes, “The characters are often

witnessing something that could change their lives forever and they have to act. They can be

heroes or cowards. The question is, ‘What is history but countless moments like this, strung

together? What is the human condition but a series of decisions you have to make?’”

With eloquent examples of courage, hope, and wonder—as well as treachery, struggle,

and loss—“Cloud Atlas” brings such moments into sharp focus. “It’s a wildly entertaining piece

of storytelling,” Hanks continues. “Take what you will from it. There’s never a moment when

the camera is not capturing some spectacular stunt or human emotion. When I read the

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screenplay, it initially raised questions about who these people are, and then their connections

became evident. Their artistic struggles, their fights for survival and the choices that bridge one

life to the next also became evident and I was completely involved. It’s a perfect blending of

David Mitchell’s story and the cinematic power of our three directors—a brilliant piece of

cinematic literature that examines the connectivity of the human race through time.”

“This was truly a one-of-a-kind filmmaking experience,” says Halle Berry, who likewise

assumes six identities. “I don’t think I’ll ever be part of another film like this. I love its

originality. There are so many barriers being broken here, so many exciting concepts and,

hopefully, it will leave people thinking about how they perceive the world and their own lives.”

These elements that resonated so strongly with Tykwer and the Wachowskis also

attracted esteemed and accomplished actors from around the world. Starring with Hanks and

Berry in a corresponding series of characterizations is a cast that includes Jim Broadbent, Hugo

Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Xun Zhou, Keith David,

David Gyasi, Susan Sarandon and Hugh Grant. As the story moves forward, the focus shifts

from one group of central players to another, while others figure in key moments or make their

presence known in more subtle ways.

“It’s a project of enormous scope,” says producer Grant Hill, marking his fourth

collaboration with the Wachowskis. “It has depth of character, romance and pathos, and also a

broad physical scale. Everything plays out on a giant canvas.”

“There are huge chase sequences here, incredible sets, really epic storytelling, but also

food for thought,” adds producer Stefan Arndt, Tykwer’s producing partner.

Says Lana, “We love to make movies that are exciting, entertaining and romantic, but

that also explore ideas. We’ve tried in our work to offer many levels or many ways to enjoy our

films: visually, we try to show the audience things they haven’t seen before; emotionally, we try

to offer enough thrills or action or romance to satisfy the kid in us as well as the audience; and,

finally, we try to offer new perspectives or thoughts about very personal issues or ideas relevant

to our everyday lives.”

“That’s what drew me originally to Andy and Lana’s work, the conviction that you can

engage the heart and the mind simultaneously,” states Tykwer. “You can have this fusion engine

of intriguing issues to talk about, and yet, while watching it, you’re just blown away.”

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FROM BOOK TO SCREEN: MAKING THE CONNECTIONS

“Listen close and I’ll yarn you ‘bout the first time

we met eye to eye…” – Zachry, 2346

The opportunity to bring audiences a tale of this magnitude was irresistible to the

Wachowskis and Tykwer. But, how? Mitchell presented his story as a series of opening acts

whose plots reach a climactic halfway point, stop, and are then resolved one by one. “We knew

we couldn’t make that structure work for a film,” Lana recalls. “But it made us think about the

possibilities of expanding the confines of a standard cinematic narrative.”

Mitchell gave each chapter its own genre “to make the parts different enough so the

stylistic color of one doesn’t bleed into another,” he says. “I thought of it as a menu with courses

from different cuisines.” This construct the filmmakers gladly adopted, making one segment

primarily a drama, one a romance, and still others a crime thriller, a comedy, and a futuristic sci-

fi adventure.

Yet the power of “Cloud Atlas” is not the ways in which these elements diverge but in

how they weave seamlessly into what Andy calls “a mosaic. As you go from scene to scene, you

are creating that mosaic in your head. You are automatically finding the associations between

them. So we intuitively went in that direction for the film.”

Distilling scenes and relationships from the book onto index cards, the filmmakers then

spent days organizing them into groups and arrived at a more direct interlacing of storylines.

Says Andy, “When you’re staring at these hundreds of cards, you see the characters side by side

and naturally gravitate toward the points where they have similar arcs, or how one picks up

where another has finished.”

“Our goal was to develop a meta-narrative to bind everything together into one flowing

story with its own momentum,” Tykwer explains.

Exploring the novel’s motifs of eternal recurrence allowed for haunting déjà vu moments

of recognition when characters meet seemingly for the first time, yet feel they know each other,

or the notes of a symphony ring familiar to a music store clerk who might have been the person

who composed it a lifetime ago.

Toward that end, the filmmakers expanded on Mitchell’s device of a comet-shaped

birthmark on certain characters to indicate the migration of a single soul. “In the novel,” says

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Mitchell, “the comet birthmark insinuates that it’s the same character being reborn over time…a

soul crossing through eternity, shifting its form.”

On screen, that rebirth is represented instead by the visual through-line of actors

reappearing in one period after another, taking another turn on the karmic wheel. Tykwer says,

“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.”

Adds Hanks, “Each character has its own personal arc, but there’s an overall arc that they

form together. One lays the foundation and another continues. Like a string of pearls.”

When players return in successive lifetimes as souls inhabiting new vessels, they

naturally appear across a range of geographic locales, and often as different nationalities or

genders. Dialect coaches William Conacher, Peggy Hall-Plessas and Julia Wilson Dickson

worked with the cast to help develop convincing characterizations as the assemblage of

American, Australian, British, Chinese, German and Korean natives modified their speech to

match their shifting cultural screen identities.

“One of the characters I portray is a German Jewish woman, and one is a woman from

the 24th

century,” Berry recounts. “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. What I needed to do was find in each the human quality that’s

relatable to everyone because that will always be just flesh and bones, heart and brains.”

Meanwhile, the birthmark image remains. But rather than a sign of passage, the

filmmakers used it to identify those who have reached a certain level of enlightenment and are on

the precipice of a critical decision that could significantly alter their lives, or the lives of others.

Says Tykwer, “It became more of a messaging system between a person in one era who does

something or creates something that then inspires the person bearing that mark in the next

lifetime.”

With this protocol in place, it enabled additional interesting possibilities. Notes Lana,

“We started to wonder if the villain of one time could be the hero of another. And once we made

that connection, the question was, how does a villain make that transformation? The comet

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became a phenomenological event. Its appearance symbolizes the opportunity for that individual

to make a difference in the world.”

For Mitchell, embarking on the first film adaptation of one of his works, “The process

was bewitching to watch. I’m delighted and in a way envious of the way these filmmakers have

disassembled my book and reassembled it in ways that play to the strengths of their medium. I

feel like the provider of stems cells, which they have grown into their own creation. It’s a

magnificent piece of work. I was swept away.”

Taking an equally unorthodox approach to the physical production, the producers

pioneered a plan for two units to shoot “Cloud Atlas” concurrently, beginning in September

2011—one helmed by Tom Tykwer and the other helmed by Lana and Andy Wachowski. This

spilt their production time by half, keeping the substantial cast for only three months instead of

six, and required duplication of key contributors, including two cinematographers, two

production designers, two lead costume and hair and makeup designers.

Using Berlin’s Babelsberg Studios as base camp, the Wachowskis filmed in and around

Berlin and Germany’s Saxony region, as well as in Mallorca, Spain, for the segments set in 1849,

2144 and the post-apocalyptic 24th

century. At the same time, Team Tykwer set off for points in

Scotland to capture those set in 1936, 1973 and 2012. The actors, nearly all of whom appeared

in each piece on the timeline, shuttled from one locale to another.

Tykwer also composed the “Cloud Atlas” score, with Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil,

months before cameras rolled. Composing their own music is uncommon enough among

filmmakers, and to begin so early is even rarer, but Tykwer found the approach valuable in

helping define the tones and meanings of each scene as it was being created, and to inspire his

cast and crew. The heart of the score is a symphony born in the 1936 sequence about a young

musician laboring to realize his masterwork, called The Cloud Atlas Sextet, and its challenge,

says Tykwer, “was to have a piece of music that connects with the period in which it is

supposedly written and also serves as the central theme for the entire movie, reappearing and

underscoring many scenes; a piece of music that someone who hears it ages later may recognize

as something from his own memory.”

For the filmmakers, bringing “Cloud Atlas” to the screen was undeniably a labor of love.

Even while writing the script, they agreed to move forward only if author David Mitchell was

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enthusiastic about their adaptation, and that commitment extended through every aspect of the

production and was shared by cast and crew alike.

“It’s a fabulous filmmaking experiment, an epic, adult film about epic, adult ideas and

what filmmaking is all about,” states Susan Sarandon, who plays, among other parts, an Indian

man and a spiritual leader in the 2300s. “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 Hugh Grant, who particularly relished the way he was cast against type in an

escalating range of villainous roles.

“Even now—and I know this sounds a bit mushy—I get teary with gratitude when I

think about the fact that we actually got to make this thing,” says Lana, echoing the sentiments of

her colleagues. “We are deeply indebted to all the actors who joined us and embraced this

experimental concept and this extraordinary story. Few movies have asked so much of their

actors. After our cast read-through, one of the funnest we’ve ever experienced, Hugo Weaving

summed it up best: ‘The story demands the characters act with courage and faith and that is also

true of everyone here in this room.’ The making of this film constantly demanded our courage

and faith.”

STORY, CAST AND CHARACTERS

“Yesterday my life was headed in one direction.

Today it is headed in another.” – Isaac Sachs, 1973

“The pressure that Lana, Andy and Tom put on themselves to see this project through

was equaled by the faith they had in us as actors,” notes Tom Hanks. “It really was

extraordinary the way they allowed us to follow our instincts. This shoot went by in the wink of

an eye because every day we were embarking on an exciting new sequence and I was part of a

great team—a genuinely unified ensemble.”

“Having each of us play multiple parts was an inspired idea,” proclaims Jim Broadbent.

“There have been various star vehicles before where the leading actor played several parts, but

nothing like this. It’s quite unique, and so well suited for this story, where everything is related

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and the energy from one current charges the next until you have this beautiful momentum, one

exciting moment after another.”

Because of the way production was synchronized around dual hubs, actors spent the

shoot segueing from one set to another—often from one country to another—with stops between

for makeup and wardrobe that would sometimes transform them so dramatically that they were

able to momentarily pass amongst one another unrecognized.

Likening the experience to a fun and festive Cirque du Soleil atmosphere, with the cast

leaping bravely from one trapeze to another, Susan Sarandon recalls, “There was a day I looked

into the mirror and, for a second, couldn’t see myself, which was the first time in my career that

has ever happened. It was a startling experience. But it’s 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 and age and color and gender

really mean in the scheme of things.”

By all accounts, it was a performer’s dream. Says Ben Whishaw, “It reminded me of

why I became an actor in the first place, and I think that was true for all of us. Most of the time,

no matter the role, you look more or less like yourself, but the instinct is always there to be

transformative and this has been an amazing opportunity for that. It’s been really liberating.”

For some, perhaps more liberating than others. As Hugh Grant dryly notes, “I was quite

intrigued by the story, which is brilliant, but I would have done it just for the chance to be a

cannibal chief who does a lot of pillaging and throat-slitting. There wasn’t much throat-slitting

in ‘Sense and Sensibility.’”

“Cloud Atlas” begins in 1849…and in 1936…1973…2012…2144…and 2346.

By introducing all its narrative threads at once and then rhythmically shifting focus from

one to another throughout, the film propels audiences simultaneously down six parallel tracks

that are experienced as one. Causes and effects immediately reveal their synchronicity and links

between characters and times are vividly realized as each piece builds toward a common end.

1849, The South Pacific

Jim Sturgess portrays idealistic young San Francisco attorney Adam Ewing, who has

traveled to the Pacific Islands to conduct business with sanctimonious plantation owner Rev.

Horrox, played by Hugh Grant. While there, Ewing witnesses the savage flogging of one of

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Horrox’s slaves, Autua, played by David Gyasi, who locks eyes with him in the moment as if

embracing a kindred spirit. Later, when Autua stows away in the lawyer’s cabin on his voyage

home, Ewing is forced to choose between his professional obligations and his growing moral

convictions—a decision that will reverberate through the centuries in ways he cannot imagine.

“There’s a moment when Autua asks Ewing to either save him or to take his life, so the

stakes are quite high,” Gyasi recounts.

“It’s the first time Ewing has seen the horror of the slave trade,” adds Sturgess, marking

the scene that sets off a series of recurring examples of how people strive through the ages to

overcome oppression of one form or another. “It was a time when it was easy for a man like him

to get caught up in the mentality of people like Horrox, who believed they were at the top of the

ladder of civilization, but he has the innate feeling that something is very wrong with this. And

then, suddenly there’s a chance for him to do something about it.”

At the same time, Ewing’s other shipmate, the malignant opportunist Dr. Goose, played

by Tom Hanks, is pursuing a very different course.

Filling out the ever-shifting ensemble, Jim Broadbent appears in this timeframe as the

ultimately pragmatic ship captain Molyneux; Susan Sarandon as Horrox’s suppressed, but

seething wife; Keith David as the Maori slave Kupaka, who silently endures; Halle Berry as

another Maori working the plantation; Hugo Weaving as Ewing’s entitled father-in-law, Haskell

Moore; and Doona Bae, in western guise, as Ewing’s beloved wife, Tilda.

1936, Scotland

Ben Whishaw is the roguishly charming, brash, and immensely gifted young composer

Robert Frobisher. Disinherited by his father and finding all doors closed to him in England,

Frobisher takes leave of his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, played by James D’Arcy, and sets out to

make a name for himself on his own terms. Apprenticing himself to Vyvyan Ayrs, a renowned

composer past his creative prime—played by Jim Broadbent as a man in his 70s—Frobisher

plans to write his masterpiece: a symphony he will call The Cloud Atlas Sextet. All the while he

keeps in touch with his beloved Sixsmith through letters, imagining a triumphant return. But

Frobisher underestimates Ayrs’ power until his situation takes a desperate turn.

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“Because Frobisher is young and full of creative energy and ideas he thinks he’s

manipulating Ayrs, but maybe Ayrs is manipulating him,” Whishaw hints. “It becomes a

struggle over the music—Frobisher to gain recognition, and Ayrs to retain his reputation.”

Supporting the main characters in Frobisher’s saga are Halle Berry as Ayrs’ trophy wife,

the stoic Jocasta, and Hugo Weaving as Ayrs’ friend, Tadeusz Kesselring, who harbors an ugly

secret. Hugh Grant appears as a posh hotel staffer refusing to allow Frobisher and Sixsmith a

peaceful parting, and Tom Hanks is the greedy manager of another, far seedier inn.

1973, San Francisco

Halle Berry takes the lead in 1973 as journalist Luisa Rey, who uncovers corporate

corruption at a nuclear power plant that could affect thousands of lives and puts her at odds with

duplicitous plant president Lloyd Hooks, played by Hugh Grant. She is aided in her

investigation by the same Rufus Sixsmith of the Frobisher piece, now an elderly physicist, and

by plant employee Isaac Sachs, Tom Hanks again, who is inexplicably struck by how familiar

Luisa looks and how strong his impulse is to help her.

“Luisa is at a crossroads,” says Berry. “As a journalist, she feels she hasn’t quite lived up

to her expectations of what that means, and then this gift falls in her lap, a major opportunity to

take a risk and so something potentially significant. She really doesn’t know how tough she is or

whether or not she can actually accomplish it, but once she makes that decision she will have to

do things she never thought possible.”

Targeted by Hooks’ hitman Bill Smoke, played by Hugo Weaving, Luisa’s only chance

to survive is to put her faith into the hands of Keith David’s character, Napier, a man officially in

Hook’s employ, but who has clearly had enough of taking his orders.

David sees him, in period, as “a kind of Shaft character, so that was a frame of reference.

What was exciting about it was reaching this part of the journey, where this soul you first saw as

the Maori Kupaka now has more opportunities as Napier and he takes advantage of that to grow.

Maybe further down the line he might be something even greater.”

Also seen on this part of the timeline are Chinese actress Xun Zhou as a male hotel

worker; Korean-born Doona Bae as a Hispanic woman—a role for which Bae, already polishing

English for her other roles, had to master Spanish dialogue; David Gyasi as Luisa’s father,

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Lester, a celebrated war correspondent who is her inspiration; and Ben Whishaw in a poignant

portrayal as a record store clerk who cannot get a certain 1930s melody out of his head.

2012, England

Jim Broadbent returns in the form of small-time publisher Timothy Cavendish, who

happily falls into a mound of cash when sales of his latest book—a vanity bio by the thuggish

Dermot Hoggins, played with a rugged Scottish brogue by Tom Hanks—go through the roof.

Unfortunately, his windfall attracts creditors, some of whom are seeking more than money.

Says Broadbent, “He goes on the run and finds what he believes is a secure place, but it

turns out to be so secure that even he can’t get out of it. So it becomes an escape story where

poor Cavendish has to find a way to save himself.”

Hugh Grant takes a turn as the publisher’s vengeful brother, Denholme, while Ben

Whishaw is Denholme’s faithless wife, Georgette. Hugo Weaving also appears as domineering

female Nurse Noakes, with whom Cavendish does battle in this piece that offers the saga’s most

liberal sprinkling of comedy. Susan Sarandon portrays Cavendish’s redemptive long-lost love,

Ursula; Jim Sturgess appears as a volatile Scottish football fan; James D’Arcy as a nursing home

orderly; and Halle Berry as a woman who momentarily catches author Dermot Hoggins’ eye.

“Nurse Noakes was the biggest challenge for me of all the parts and also the most fun,”

offers Weaving. “She’s a hideous gorgon who infantilizes and despises the residents, but it’s her

who’s dead inside. She’s been in this institution for many years and I believe the place has

gotten into her bones.”

2144, Neo Seoul

Doona Bae takes center stage as the fabricant Sonmi-451, genetically engineered to spend

her brief existence as a compliant restaurant server in an ominously totalitarian society built atop

the ruins of a flooded Seoul. Encouraged to nurture forbidden independent thoughts by sister

fabricant Yoona-939, played by Xun Zhou, Sonmi embarks on a path from which there can be no

retreat. With the help of revolutionary Hae-Joo Chang, portrayed by Jim Sturgess, Sonmi takes

her courageous and perilous first steps toward a far-reaching insurrection.

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“Yoona and Sonmi were not content with their lives. They had their own way of thinking

and came to believe that things did not have to be a certain way. They wanted freedom,” says

Chinese actress Zhou, making her Western film debut with “Cloud Atlas.”

Bae, likewise making her Western screen debut, acknowledges, “It’s Yoona who makes

Sonmi curious about the larger human world. She wakes Sonmi up so she can think for herself,

but it’s Chang, the first pureblood who is kind to her, who shows her that she can stand up for

herself with dignity.”

Representing the repressors in this society are Hugh Grant as smarmy Seer Rhee, the

restaurant manager who extends his authority after hours, and Hugo Weaving as Boardman

Mephi, bureaucratic upholder of the status quo. Halle Berry and Susan Sarandon take on the

male roles of Ovid, a doctor who removes Sonmi’s restricting collar, and Yusouf Suleiman, a

scientist who champions the fabricants’ rights, while Keith David leads the resistance movement

as An-Kor Apis. Tom Hanks appears as an actor in a movie depiction of the publisher

Cavendish’s life, which inspires Sonmi, Jim Broadbent appears as a Korean musician, and James

D’Arcy is the government Archivist tasked with recording her confession.

After the Fall, 2321 and 2346, Hawaii

Hanks last appears as the damaged but fundamentally decent goatherd Zachry, one of a

peaceful tribe that survived a planetary cataclysm that plunged most of humanity into a primitive

way of life. Among the remnants of their cultural past is an image of Sonmi, who has taken on

goddess stature, and whose words are cited by Susan Sarandon, playing the village Abbess.

For this world, author Mitchell reached into the future for an imagined dialect in the form

of an unadorned, shorthand communication. The directors retained this language and worked

with the cast in a Los Angeles recording studio prior to shooting, to ensure it would translate on

screen.

“We settled on a language that was simply stripped-down English, using minimal words

to convey feelings,” states Halle Berry, who appears in the segment as Meronym, an emissary of

an advanced human community called Prescients. Adopting the pidgin dialect to gain his trust,

Meronym seeks Zachry’s aid to locate something she desperately needs. But to help her, Zachry

must not only put his life at risk and deny everything he believes in, but quell the doubts inside

that speak to him through the taunting voice of Hugo Weaving’s character, Old Georgie.

15

Xun Zhou appears as Zachry’s sister, Rose, Jim Sturgess as his brother-in-law, Adam,

and Ben Whishaw as a fellow tribesman. Hugh Grant takes his most spectacularly evil turn as

the Kona Chief, leader of a marauding band of cannibal warriors, while Keith David, David

Gyasi and Jim Broadbent are counted among the enlightened Prescients.

Addressing how the life cycle of his roles reaches its nadir here, Grant observes, “Clearly

the potential is there for souls to improve—and some do, dramatically, but some don’t. They

never get better. They get worse. It all comes down to free will and the choices we make.”

THE LONG VIEW

“I think I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible?

I just met her and yet I feel like something very important

has happened to me.” – Isaac Sachs, 1973

As the consequences of such choices play out through eternity, individual character arcs

expand into the larger arcs that define a life.

“I start out as a native woman who has little power, then Jocasta, who is really a shell of a

person, with no voice,” says Berry. “Then there’s Luisa Rey, who’s struggling hard to find her

voice and her strength. I have a moment in the Cavendish story as a mysterious party guest, and

we don’t know much about her other than her confident air, but in the next life I portray a doctor,

Ovid, working on the right side of the moral balance, so that by the time we arrive at Meronym

you see in her the culmination of this journey and why she’s so strong.”

Similarly, Keith David’s characters run the gamut from slave to leader. And when Jim

Sturgess appears as Ewing he makes his decisions instinctively as a man beginning to

comprehend the meaning of justice, but those ideas are more precisely formed by the time that

soul has evolved into the freedom fighter Chang, as “Cloud Atlas” acknowledges humanity’s

endless and universal yearning for self-determination.

“If all my roles were to have a theme, it would be about working within institutions they

don’t like and wish they could change,” states James D’Arcy, whose characters include those

employed by a corrupt power company, a horrible nursing home and a repressive government.

“But my last incarnation is the Archivist, and even though he’s technically part of the oppression

he finally takes a stand, so there’s hope for that soul.”

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Because of the way the filmmakers deconstructed the novel for the screen, Andy

Wachowski says, “You see a moment where Autua is in danger of being shot as he hangs from

the ship’s rigging, and then a similar point where Sonmi is nearly killed while breaking out of

prison. If you were to sandwich these moments on top of each other you see the similarities and

the turning points.”

“I lost count of the number of ways the directors made one scene fit with the next, a

thousand miles or several centuries away,” adds David Mitchell. “It may be a visual link, or a

single word, or in the architecture, or an actor’s face. But the effect is that of a single, ingenious

mosaic, glinting across time.” Offering another example where Chang fires a weapon at his

pursuers during a chase with Sonmi above the Neo Seoul skyline, the author says, “The scene

ends with a glass wall, cracking, and the next begins with a crack spreading across the

windscreen of Luisa Rey's VW, as it plunges under the waters of San Francisco Bay.”

Ricocheting through time also alters the concept of loss. When lovers are torn apart in

one era, Tykwer notes, “We have the possibility of cutting to the same actors meeting again,

bringing a happy ending to a moment that seemingly ended in heartbreak.”

Meanwhile, running throughout the story is the idea of creative expression, and of

leaving behind what Tykwer calls “a legacy, in the form of art that will then serve to influence

someone else.” The chronicle of Adam Ewing’s 1849 sea voyage becomes a published journal

that Frobisher reads in 1936. Frobisher’s letters subsequently fall into the hands of Luisa Rey in

1973, and Luisa’s story about the plot at the nuclear power plant then becomes the manuscript of

a book, submitted to publisher Cavendish. Cavendish’s modern-day adventure becomes the

subject of a film that Sonmi watches in 2144, and Sonmi’s declaration of freedom is repeated

and remembered until, even in a society that has lost its books and technology, her catechism is

revered by Zachry and his tribe into the 24th

century.

Similarly, power and powerlessness recur as one of mankind’s most persistent conflicts.

Hanks’ basest character, 1849’s Dr. Goose, justifies his thievery and disregard for human life

early on by declaring, “The weak are meat, the strong do eat,” and, lifetimes later, his soul still

grapples with that concept—as do others, from both sides of the equation.

But while some people never learn, others make huge strides, a joyful course perhaps

most apparent in Hanks’ full range of characterizations, from the vile Goose through to Zachry.

Still, vestiges of the past remain.

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“A moment arises where Zachry is forced into a situation where he can be violent again,”

Tykwer describes. “He has his knife at the throat of a Kona warrior, and Tom is such an

amazing actor that you can see on his face those earlier characters overlaid in Zachry. It’s the

force of that old killer, Goose, somewhere deep in his genes. Although he’s a different man

now, Goose would not have hesitated.”

In outlining this path for the Zachry soul, Lana says, “We were simultaneously drawn to

this concept, which became one of the meta-narratives of the film: how a person can go from the

worst of us to the best. All these people can remain in a narcissistic, exploitative, predaceous

life, or they can change. So we wanted to start with a character that was a pure predator, Goose,

and trace his progress upwards until he becomes potentially the comet hero.”

Often that evolution is triggered by love, illustrated by the interlocking nature of Hanks’

and Berry’s roles. Lana continues, “When Luisa Rey meets Isaac Sachs at the power plant he’s

in the middle of his journey—not a bad guy, but still working for this evil organization. But he

falls in love with her and that literally changes his direction.”

TWICE THE WORK, HALF THE TIME

“No matter what you do, it will never amount to anything more than a

single drop of water in a limitless ocean.” – Haskell Moore, 1849

“What is an ocean, but a multitude of drops?” – Adam Ewing, 1849

Tykwer and the Wachowskis did not anticipate working on two fronts when they set out

to adapt Cloud Atlas. The logistics of filmmaking were overshadowed then by their focus on

capturing the essence of Mitchell’s novel. But as the script took shape, the cast assembled and

the scope of what they were trying to accomplish became clear, the dual-directing plan emerged

as the most efficient. They could shoot in half the time by dividing the effort between two units

operating concurrently, each focusing on three of the story’s six segments, and each with their

own established team of talented collaborators, while the actors moved from one to the other.

“One year before the start of production, we brought the department heads from both

crews together for a four-week summit in Berlin so we could all sit down and work through the

script,” says producer Grant Hill. “We were testing relationships and methods and assessing

how this whole thing could work.” Taking their cue from the directors, the feeling was

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overwhelmingly collaborative. “With all these great people open to professional partnership, we

realized it would be a matter of providing clear direction and an iron-clad plan, and then

harnessing all this firepower.”

The Wachowskis navigated Adam Ewing’s 1849 ocean voyage, Sonmi’s 2144 rebellion

and the events of Zachry’s life in the 24th

century. Their team included production designer

Hugh Bateup and director of photography John Toll.

Tom Tykwer captured the journey of musical amanuensis Robert Frobisher in 1936,

journalist Luisa Rey’s exposé of corporate conspiracy in 1973, and the singular, often comical,

predicament of London publisher Cavendish in 2012. Joining him was production designer Uli

Hanisch and director of photography Frank Griebe.

Production launched in September 2011 with Tykwer in Scotland and the Wachowskis in

Mallorca. Combined, their exterior locations would ultimately include Glasgow, Edinburgh and

the Scottish countryside, Saxony, and sites in Berlin, before culminating in Babelsberg’s state-

of-the-art soundstages for interiors and green screen.

Though countries apart, the trio was in constant touch. “The directors thought through

every single detail, every cut and connection between all the pieces of the story and were

tremendously prepared prior to shooting,” producer Stefan Arndt acknowledges. “During

filming, they would call each other to say, ‘You have to change something here; when you shoot

the next scene, know that the actor is doing this or that.’ They were great communicators, really

able to share their decisions.”

Mallorca provided the settings for the first and last portions of the saga, serving first as

the Pacific Island from which Adam Ewing and Autua set sail for America, then as the Hawaiian

valley where Zachry lives some 500 years later. Says Lana, “We decided it should be the same

island. That, as well as the extremes of the Tom Hanks roles from Goose to Zachry, bookend the

first and the final portions of the timeline and help to underscore the theme of recurrence.”

The scene in which Ewing encounters Dr. Goose on the beach was filmed in Sa Calobra

Cove in Torrent de Pareis, and Horrox’s circa 1800s tobacco plantation was created on a private

estate in Mallorca’s Es Llombards area.

Ewing’s ship, The Prophetess, was actually a beautifully preserved and seaworthy period

vessel called the Earl of Pembroke, built in Sweden and now docked in Charleston Harbor,

Cornwall, by the Square Sail Company. It sailed to meet the production in Mallorca, where it

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underwent some cosmetic changes. Its captain, Robin Davies, served as marine coordinator for

the film, and he and his 15-member crew also appear as extras in the deck scenes.

Inland, the filmmakers found the rugged, mountainous backdrop for Zachry’s trek with

Meronym, taking advantage of the spectacular view atop Puig Mayor—at 4711 feet, the highest

peak of all the Balearic Islands. There, an existing 1950s-era satellite station still maintained by

the military was perfectly adaptable for the structure Meronym is seeking.

From Mallorca, the Wachowskis traveled to Saxony in Southeastern Germany, where the

region’s famous sandstone rock formations and thick forests completed the picture of Zachry’s

home and the surrounding woods where his family is menaced by the Kona. In constructing the

village, Bateup comments, “We didn’t want to present this society as too rudimentary, as if they

had reverted to the Dark Ages. We decided they were two or three generations beyond a world

collapse and had learned how to survive and do things again. They made things from the

materials available to them, what they scavenged from cities. They’re artisans, not barbarians.”

For continuity, the small herd of goats Zachry is seen tending while at the Mallorcan site

was transported to Saxony. Joining them were six horses, trained in Spain and brought from

Madrid to Saxony for the terrifying Kona attacks on the village. Spanish stunt coordinator Jordi

Casares and his team rode the horses in these action sequences, while expert rider and Steadicam

operator Jorge Agero was given the decidedly unsteady challenge of filming while riding.

Tykwer, meanwhile, transformed a Glasgow neighborhood with inclined streets into 1973

San Francisco. Signage and lights were replaced and locally sourced period cars brought in for a

tense chase and shoot-out as Luisa Rey and Napier scramble to elude the assassin Bill Smoke.

Edinburgh’s Council Chambers became the hotel where Frobisher escapes down the

drainpipe and, later, the city’s famous Walter Scott Monument served as his retreat and the place

where he last sees the love of his life. The 200-foot monument, heretofore never closed to the

public for filming, granted “Cloud Atlas” two days’ access so cameras and equipment could be

hoisted up to the viewing platform by crane rather than via its narrow spiral staircase.

For Ayrs’ stately manor where Frobisher seeks employment, Tykwer and production

designer Uli Hanisch joined the locations team in scouting the Scottish countryside to find the

privately owned Overtoun House in West Dunbartonshire. It would serve not only as Ayrs’

home in 1936, but appear re-dressed as the nightmarish Aurora Country Estates where Cavendish

is incarcerated in 2012. “We have nearly 80 years between them so the trees and garden would

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be different. The strategy was to add things like foliage for the earlier time that we could then

remove for the plainer exterior, decades later,” notes Hanisch. To further suit the Cavendish

scenes they added a conservatory and a formidable front gate.

Symbolically, Tykwer suggests, “It was once the chateau where Ayrs, the elderly

composer, tries to imprison young Frobisher, and then a lifetime later it’s him, reborn as

Cavendish, who finds himself imprisoned in the place where he used to be the warden.”

It was determined in the film’s conceptual stages that certain spaces should likewise be

repeated from one part of the story to another. “We wanted to be flexible, however,” states

Hanisch. “Sometimes it’s the real place, sometimes just a hint. Our starting point was Ewing’s

cabin under the deck of the ship, and we recreated the shape of this room throughout:

Cavendish’s office, Luisa Rey’s apartment, Frobisher’s room in Ayrs’ mansion, Sonmi’s safe

house and Zachry’s hut.”

Thus, the interior of Ayrs’ opulent musical salon, built on a soundstage, became the

Aurora Country Estates’ depressing dining room. The restaurant where Sonmi works, which

Bateup designed, boasts a cheerful, brightly lit, virtual atmosphere for consumers to enjoy, but

after-hours reveals its grey cavernous reality. “We had to invent a consumer society of 2144 and

imagine what a fast-food restaurant would look like. Lana and Andy have definite ideas about

how they see these periods so we tossed around ideas and eventually came up with the Sonmi

world,” he says. After filming wrapped for those scenes, the space was repurposed in black,

white and red as the rooftop venue for Cavendish’s book reception, where a massive aquarium

pays homage to the virtual fish pond of the restaurant’s floor.

The designers also established reappearing elements such as trains and bridges that figure

in Frobisher’s, Cavendish’s, Luisa Rey’s and Zachry’s storylines. Egg-shaped objects also recur,

from the toys in the factory that Luisa Rey runs through in San Francisco to the restaurant seats

and the recording device of Sonmi’s archivist.

“We wanted our depictions of each era to be clear so there’s no question whether it’s the

1930s or the 1840s,” says Hanisch. “At the same time, visual cues and recycled spaces reinforce

the idea of connections and the continuity of a single story.”

Also responsible for the film’s lush and seamless look were cinematographers John Toll

and Frank Griebe. “The principal visual design elements were in place when we came onto the

film,” notes Toll. “One major goal of the cinematography was to blend the look of the individual

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sequences that spanned 500 years to create an overlapping and rich dramatic feel for the entire

story, but not necessarily by trying to create one specific and detailed look for the whole film.

Basically, this meant a visual approach that was appropriate to each chapter while still

maintaining a sense of continuity throughout.”

After meeting to confer on cameras, lenses and film emulsions, Griebe and Toll left for

their respective locations but kept track of one another’s work via dailies.

Dan Glass, who has worked with the Wachowskis since “The Matrix,” led the visual

effects department for both units. His work is most evident in the two futuristic settings,

particularly the action-driven Sonmi sequences and the simulated atmosphere of the restaurant

where she works, but not a single era missed his touch. He helped Tom Tykwerturn Glasgow

into San Francisco and constructed its fictional Swannekke Power Station. “Tom is accustomed

to shooting with practical locations so we worked more with the physical elements and

augmented them. It was a great approach for the material,” he says.

The scene in which Luisa Rey traverses the Golden Gate Bridge was filmed partly in a

water tank in Cologne and partly on the runway of Germany’s former Tempelhof Airport, where

the stunt cars collide and her Beetle goes over the rail. The remainder, including the span of

bridge and the view of the San Francisco Bay, were digitally rendered.

For 2144 Neo Seoul, the filmmakers imagined a future where increased water levels have

submerged the older portions of the city. “They’ve built vast walls to try to keep the ocean out,

and in some of these areas we created tops of skyscrapers poking up from the water to suggest

buildings deeper beneath,” Glass describes. “Newer parts of the city, where the wealthier people

live, we imagined shooting up from the tops of these ruins. As you descend, you come across a

more grim and grimy world, the place where Chang’s rebellion was born.”

Sonmi’s escape, and the breathtaking clashes between her champion Chang and the

government hit squad that takes them high over Neo Seoul’s skyline and through its depths, were

filmed with green screen and CGI at Babelsberg, where both units finally converged.

COSTUMES, HAIR AND MAKEUP

“I saw something in his ice-blue eyes, something beneath all the years

and the illness. Something familiar.” – Robert Frobisher, 1936

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In addition to outfitting individual characters for their time and station, costume designers

Kym Barrett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud sought to introduce subtle themes of color, pattern and

design that could merge and unite them through their respective timeframes. Barrett, another

“Matrix” alumnus, says, “We chose certain green tones, for example, that appear on several

characters. A triangular 1970s design we found on a shirt from that period we subsequently re-

arranged to become the wallpaper in Sonmi’s safe house. We tried to slip motifs like this into all

the parts of the story to help develop a subconscious flow of imagery.”

Gayraud, marking his third collaboration with Tykwer, bought ready-made garments in

Berlin shops for the Cavendish segments, but the bulk of the wardrobe for the earlier times were

handmade to his specifications, often with authentic vintage fabrics unearthed at Paris flea

markets. For Ayrs’ dressing gown, he used a 1970s fabric with geometric designs reminiscent of

the early 20th

century’s Futurism movement, which he then cut and dyed. Rufus Sixsmith’s rich

waistcoat was made of a fabric from the 1830s, and pays homage to the Adam Ewing period.

“We imagined, for example, that Luisa Rey might have bought a robe from the 1930s

from an antique market,” he says. “The necklace Halle Berry wears as Luisa came from one she

wore as Jocasta in 1936 and reappears again when she’s a party guest in the Cavendish piece.”

Likewise, jewelry-maker Lorenzo Mancianti created the buttons of Ewing’s waistcoat

that catch Dr. Goose’s acquisitive eye, and later resurface as beads around Zachry’s neck. The

buttons had not only to look like an amazing stone, but resemble the Earth seen from space, and

capture a sense of timelessness.

Barrett adopted a minimalist approach to Sonmi’s wardrobe, explaining, “Hers is a

political and emotional journey and Sonmi becomes a mythical icon in Zachry’s future. To make

her real and then transform her into someone who means so much to others, we decided to

present her almost naked. We let her face be the focus.”

In the rugged landscape of Zachry’s world, Barrett’s view was practical. “Living in a

forest, the characters should blend into the greenery for their own survival. I came up with the

idea that they would be a people who knitted and everything would be hand-spun or macramé.

Living with the daily threat of the Kona, they need to be mobile, and a spinning wheel is easy to

pack.”

Collaborating with Barrett and the Wachowskis on the Ewing, Sonmi and Zachry

sequences was hair and makeup designer Jeremy Woodhead. Working with Gayraud and

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Tykwer on the Frobisher, Luisa Rey and Cavendish sequences was his counterpart, Daniel

Parker. Each led their teams in helping alter the ages, and sometimes the genders and ethnicities

of the ensemble cast as they traversed place and time. Their mandate was to change the actors’

appearances without rendering them unrecognizable. Even in the most extreme makeup,

Woodhead recalls, “The trick was in finding that balance, to disguise without obliterating their

natural features.”

Some of the metamorphoses required prosthetics, at which they are both expert, but,

wherever possible, they favored traditional makeup, wigs and hair pieces.

Working on the first and the last portions of the timeline, Woodhead took Tom Hanks

from one extreme to the other. “We wanted Tom to shine through in his final role as Zachry.

With his Dr. Goose character in 1849, I had more leeway to create a ‘character.’ I gave him a

bald cap, thinning ginger hair, sideburns, a false nose and great big teeth. He’s still recognizable,

but a million miles away from the kind, strong, silent Zachry.”

Parker prepared Hanks for his turn as tough-guy Dermot Hoggins, author of Knuckle

Sandwich, saying, “We created a nose that had been massively broken and gave him a shaved

head, scars and tattoos.” Later, as an avaricious hotel manager in 1936, the actor acquired a

mustache, a thickened neck and a bulbous alcohol-soaked nose.

Among Woodhead’s achievements was transforming Hugh Grant into a fearsome

cannibal in white mud wash, a process that, he relates, “took two hours, and included bald caps, a

Mohawk, tattoos, body paints and teeth. It’s unlike anything Hugh has ever done before.”

Additionally, Woodhead prepared Jim Sturgess as Chang in Sonmi’s saga and

transitioned Halle Berry from a Maori to an aged Asian male, to the naturally luminous

Meronym. He also helped Susan Sarandon become the male Suleiman, gave Doona Bae’s

features a western look for her portrayal of Tilda, and helped James D’Arcy and Hugh Grant

assume their Asian roles.

It fell to Parker to turn Hugo Weaving into Nurse Noakes. “Making up a man as a

woman—and vice versa—is always tricky,” he says. “Male bone structure is different from

female, so it takes time to complete. The whole shape of the skull is different. You have to alter

the forehead and the quality of the skin. There are a lot of subtleties that you wouldn’t think

about, but, if they aren’t addressed, will make it obvious that this is a man in drag, and that’s not

what we wanted.”

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Parker also turned Jim Sturgess into a bearded Scotsman, Ben Whishaw into the demure

Georgette Cavendish, Doona Bae into a Hispanic woman working in a factory, and Xun Zhou

into a male hotel clerk. He helped Halle Berry through incarnations as an Indian party guest, the

half-Puerto Rican journalist Luisa Rey, and the European Jocasta, wife of the composer Ayrs.

“This film was an apex for hair and makeup design, a dream job for someone in our line

of work,” says Woodhead. “It’s not going to get any better than this.”

THE CLOUD ATLAS SEXTET

“That’s it. The music from my dream.” – Vyvyan Ayrs, 1936

Tom Tykwer is among a select group of filmmakers who compose music for their own

movies. And, unlike the way films are generally scored, after they are shot and edited, it’s a

process he likes to begin well in advance of filming. Collaborating with Johnny Klimek and

Reinhold Heil, with whom he has scored nearly all his films, Tykwer had the music for “Cloud

Atlas” written and recorded two months prior to principal photography.

“He prefers this to using temporary music by other composers,” Heil explains. “It allows

him to use the temp score without worrying about what will take its place. As the film takes

shape in post-production, we see what’s missing or needs changing and re-record the final.”

“In this way,” Tykwer adds, “the music becomes an atmospheric note or sublevel not

only for the film, but as inspiration to the cast, making the score a part of the experience.”

“The first thing they did at the table read was play the music for the actors and show us

renderings, so we would know the adventure we were going on,” says Hanks. “It was all part of

a fully realized vision that was presented to us from the get-go.”

The composers welcomed their widening circle. Says Klimek, “It was great to get input

from Lana and Andy, who are not musicians but have a sense for using music dramatically.

They stirred our process in the best possible way.”

The music is first the focus of the Frobisher narrative, as the young composer struggles to

complete his life’s work, The Cloud Atlas Sextet, but beyond that, says Klimek, “It’s an ever-

present melody, from a simple string line to a riff in a 1970s rock piece, to a jazz sextet playing

in the background at the Cavendish party. We needed something beautiful and malleable enough

to take us through five centuries.”

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“Lifetimes later, someone who hears it might sense its familiarity,” Tykwer adds,

acknowledging how the score becomes, itself, a part of the larger reincarnation motif. “The

sextet belongs to the period in which it was conceived, the 1930s, in what would be Frobisher’s

modernistic style, but also recurs everywhere and matches so many scenes, becoming the central

theme for the entire film.”

The Cloud Atlas Sextet echoes the composition of the story itself, with all its distinct

pieces, moods and themes rhythmically merging into a whole. Embracing that metaphor,

Tykwer says, “There are lots of subjective voices in the story, and we were searching for one

voice that could encompass them all, to form a beautiful choir.”

Citing a sentiment expressed by the character Adam Ewing, whose adventure opens the

saga in 1849, Andy Wachowski says, “One of the last lines of the film is Adam Ewing saying

‘What is an ocean, but a multitude of drops.’ And when you think of all the people who were

involved, all the favors we called in, all the individuals who contributed to this collective, that’s

really the story of the making of this film.”

“There’s an idea I’ve always liked, that the real nature of immortality is our words and

actions that go on apportioning themselves throughout all of time,” says Lana Wachowski. “It’s

such an intriguing concept and part of what got us to thinking about making this movie. It’s

what we were hoping to capture.”

______________________________________

ABOUT THE CAST

TOM HANKS (Dr. Henry Goose, Hotel Manager, Isaac Sachs, Dermot Hoggins,

Cavendish Look-a-like Actor, Zachry) is an award-winning actor, producer and director. One of

only two actors in history to win back-to-back Best Actor Academy Awards®, he won his first

Oscar® in 1994 for his moving portrayal of AIDS-stricken lawyer Andrew Beckett in Jonathan

Demme’s “Philadelphia.” The following year, he took home his second Oscar® for his

unforgettable performance in the title role of Robert Zemeckis’ “Forrest Gump.” He also won

Golden Globe Awards for both films, as well as a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award®

for the

latter.

26

Hanks has also been honored with Academy Award® nominations for his performances in

Penny Marshall’s “Big,” Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” and Robert Zemeckis’ “Cast

Away,” also winning Golden Globes for “Big” and “Cast Away.” In 2002, Hanks received the

American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Hanks will next be seen starring as the title character in Paul Greengrass’ “Captain

Philips,” based on real-life Captain Richard Phillips’ encounter with Somali pirates, which is set

for release next October. Slated for release in 2014 is John Lee Hancock’s “Saving Mr. Banks,”

a drama about how the classic film “Mary Poppins” came to be, with Hanks in the role of Walt

Disney.

He most recently portrayed Thomas Schell, alongside Sandra Bullock and Thomas Horn,

in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” Stephen Daldry’s Oscar®-nominated drama set against

the backdrop of 9/11, adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer’s acclaimed novel of the same name.

His other feature credits include the animated adventure “The Polar Express,” which he also

executive produced and which reunited him with director Robert Zemeckis; the Coen brothers’

“The Ladykillers”; Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal” and “Catch Me If You Can”; Sam

Mendes’ “Road to Perdition”; Frank Darabont’s “The Green Mile”; Nora Ephron’s “You’ve Got

Mail” and “Sleepless in Seattle”; Penny Marshall’s “A League of Their Own”; Ron Howard’s

“Apollo 13,” “The Da Vinci Code,” “Angels & Demons” and “Splash”; and the computer-

animated blockbusters “Cars,” “Toy Story,” “Toy Story 2” and “Toy Story 3.”

Hanks’ work on the big screen has translated to success on the small screen. Following

“Apollo 13,” he executive produced and hosted the acclaimed HBO miniseries “From the Earth

to the Moon,” also directing one segment, and writing several others. His work on the miniseries

brought him Emmy, Golden Globe and Producers Guild Awards, as well as an Emmy

nomination for Best Director.

His collaboration with Steven Spielberg on “Saving Private Ryan” led to them executive

producing the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” based on the book by Stephen Ambrose.

Hanks also directed a segment and wrote another segment of the fact-based miniseries, which

won Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Miniseries. In addition, Hanks earned an Emmy

Award for Best Director and an Emmy nomination for Best Writing, and received another

Producers Guild Award for his work on the project.

27

In 2008, Hanks executive produced the critically acclaimed HBO miniseries “John

Adams,” starring Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney and Tom Wilkinson. It won 13 Emmy Awards,

including the Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries, as well as a Golden Globe for Best Miniseries,

and a PGA Award. More recently, Hanks and Spielberg re-teamed for the award-winning HBO

miniseries “The Pacific,” for which Hanks once again served as executive producer. The ten-

part program won eight Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Miniseries, and brought Hanks

his fourth PGA Award.

Hanks most recently executive produced the HBO political drama starring Julianne

Moore and Ed Harris, which follows Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate in his 2008

Presidential campaign. “Game Change” garnered 12 Emmy Award nominations in 2012,

including Best Miniseries. He will next serve as host, narrator and historical commentator for

the two hour National Geographic television movie based on the best-selling book Killing

Lincoln, which is set for release in 2013.

In 1996, Hanks made his successful feature film writing and directing debut with “That

Thing You Do,” in which he also starred. He more recently wrote, produced, directed and

starred in “Larry Crowne,” with Julia Roberts. Under his own Playtone banner, Hanks, together

with his wife, Rita Wilson, and partner, Gary Goetzman, produced 2002’s smash hit romantic

comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Other producing credits include “Where the Wild

Things Are,” “The Polar Express,” “The Ant Bully,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Mamma Mia!,”

“The Great Buck Howard,” “Starter for 10” and the HBO series “Big Love.”

HALLE BERRY (Native Woman, Jocasta Ayrs, Luisa Rey, Indian Party Guest, Ovid,

Meronym) is an Oscar®-winning actress who has been honored for her work in both film and

television.

Berry won an Academy Award®, a Screen Actors Guild

® (SAG) Award and the Berlin

Silver Bear Award and was named Best Actress by the National Board of Review for her

brilliant performance as a woman who becomes involved with a racist prison guard in

“Monster’s Ball.” She also earned the Emmy, Golden Globe, SAG® and NAACP Image Award

for her extraordinary portrayal of the actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge, the first African

American to be nominated for an Academy Award®, in HBO’s telefilm “Introducing Dorothy

Dandridge,” which she also produced.

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She previously received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations both for her role as Janie

in “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” adapted from the novel and produced by Oprah Winfrey,

and also for her work as an executive producer on the HBO film “Lackawanna Blues.” For her

starring role in the 2010 biographical drama “Frankie and Alice,” she received a Golden Globe

Award nomination for Best Actress and won an Image Award in the same category. Berry also

earned critical acclaim for her starring role as a widow in “Things We Lost in the Fire,” written

by Sam Mendes and directed by Susanne Bier. In recognition for her achievements as an actress,

the Harvard Foundation at Harvard University honored Berry as Cultural Artist of the Year.

Berry most recently wrapped Brad Anderson’s thriller “The Hive,” starring opposite

Abigail Breslin and Michael Imperioli, and was seen in Garry Marshall’s ensemble romantic

comedy “New Years Eve.”

Berry made her feature film debut in Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever.” She went on to star

opposite Warren Beatty in the socio-political comedy “Bulworth.” Among her additional credits

are starring as Storm in the worldwide hit “X-Men,” “X2,” and “X-Men: The Last Stand”;

“Catwoman”; “Gothika”; starring as Jinx in the James Bond feature “Die Another Day,” which

was then the largest-grossing Bond film in the franchise; “Losing Isaiah,” opposite Jessica

Lange; “Executive Decision”; the live-action film “The Flintstones”; “The Last Boy Scout” and

“The Perfect Stranger,” opposite Bruce Willis; “Strictly Business”; “Boomerang,” alongside

Eddie Murphy; and “Swordfish,” with John Travolta and Hugh Jackman. She also lent her voice

to the role of Cappy in the animated hit “Robots.”

Her additional television credits include the highly rated ABC miniseries “Oprah Winfrey

Presents: The Wedding,” directed by Charles Burnett, and the title role in Alex Haley’s

miniseries, “Queen,” a performance that earned Berry her first NAACP Image Award for Best

Actress, as well as the Best Newcomer Award from the Hollywood Women’s Press Club. She

also starred in Showtime’s original telefilm “Solomon and Sheba.”

JIM BROADBENT (Captain Molyneux, Vyvyan Ayrs, Timothy Cavendish, Korean

Musician, Prescient 2) won an Academy Award® and a Golden Globe Award for his

performance in Richard Eyre’s 2001 biopic “Iris,” opposite Judi Dench. Broadbent’s portrayal

of Iris Murdoch’s devoted husband, John Bayley, also brought him a National Board of Review

Award, as well as Screen Actors Guild Award® and BAFTA Award nominations for Best

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Supporting Actor. In addition, he won a Los Angeles Film Critics Award for his work in both

“Iris” and Baz Luhrmann’s groundbreaking musical “Moulin Rouge!,” also winning a BAFTA

Award for Best Supporting Actor for the latter.

Broadbent earlier won a London Film Critics Circle Award and the Best Actor Award at

the 1999 Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of W.S. Gilbert, of Gilbert & Sullivan, in Mike

Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy.” Leigh has also directed Broadbent in the acclaimed films “Life is

Sweet,” “Vera Drake” and most recently in the 2010 drama “Another Year.” In 2012,

Broadbent’s performance alongside Meryl Streep in the critically acclaimed drama “The Iron

Lady” earned a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Broadbent’s additional film credits include “Animals United,” “Perrier’s Bounty, the

worldwide blockbusters “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part II” and “Harry Potter and

the Half-Blood Prince”; Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal

Skull”; the fantasy adventure “Inkheart,” the historical drama “The Young Victoria,” the British

independent film “The Damned United”; “Hot Fuzz”; “Art School Confidential”; “The

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”; “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and the

sequel, “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”; Mira Nair’s “Vanity Fair”; “Bright Young

Things,” for director Stephen Fry; “Gangs of New York,” under the direction of Martin Scorsese;

Richard Loncraine’s “Richard III”; Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway”; “Enchanted

April,” directed by Mike Newell; and Neil Jordan’s “The Crying Game,” to name only a portion.

He was also heard in the animated features “Valiant” “Robots” and more recently, “Arthur

Christmas.”

Honored for his work on television, Broadbent recently won the UK’s Royal Television

Society (RTS) Award for “Any Human Heart,” which also received a BAFTA TV Award

nomination. Previously, he won Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards and garnered an Emmy

nomination for Best Actor for the titular role in the telefilm “Longford.” He had earlier received

Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his performance in the historical HBO movie “The

Gathering Storm.” He was also in the HBO movie “Einstein and Eddington” and has appeared

in more than 40 other television and cable projects, including miniseries, movies and series.

Broadbent studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and has

performed extensively on the stage, most notably with the Royal National Theatre and the Royal

Shakespeare Company.

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HUGO WEAVING (Haskell Moore, Tadeusz Kesselring, Bill Smoke, Nurse Noakes,

Boardman Mephi, Old Georgie) is widely known for his role as Agent Smith in the Wachowskis’

highly acclaimed Matrix trilogy, for his starring role in “V for Vendetta,” and as Elrond in the

award-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy. He recently reprised the role of Elrond in “The Hobbit:

An Unexpected Journey,” in theatres in December. The film is the first of three movies Jackson

will direct based on the book The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

He previously starred as Johann Schmidt/The Red Skull in Joe Johnston’s “Captain

America” and in Johnston’s “The Wolfman,” and “The Keyman.” Weaving’s numerous credits

in voice work include the characters of Megatron in Michael Bay’s blockbuster “Transformers”

and its sequels, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”;

as well as Noctus/Grimble in Zack Snyder’s “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole”;

Noah the Elder in George Miller’s award winning “Happy Feet,” and “Happy Feet Two”; and

Rex the Sheepdog in “Babe” and its sequel, “Babe: Pig in the City.”

Weaving is the recipient of four Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, receiving the

first in 1991 for Best Actor for his portrayal of a blind photographer in Jocelyn Moorhouse’s

breakthrough feature “Proof.” He received a nomination in the same category in 1994 for the

role of Mitzi Del Bra in Stephan Elliott’s “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”

Weaving won his second AFI Award for Best Actor in 1998 for his role in “The Interview,”

written and directed by Craig Monahan, for which he also received the 1998 Best Actor Award

at the World Film Festival in Montreal. In 2005, his role in the critically acclaimed “Little Fish,”

opposite Cate Blanchett and Sam Neill, earned Weaving his third AFI Award for Best Actor. In

2012, he was honored with his fourth AFI Award, for Best Supporting actor, for his role in

“Oranges and Sunshine,” opposite Emma Watson and David Wenham, which also received the

Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Weaving’s extensive stage credits include roles in the Sydney Theatre Company’s “Uncle

Vanya,” opposite Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh; “Hedda Gabler,” opposite Cate

Blanchett; “Riflemind,” directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman; and numerous productions with

Sydney’s acclaimed Belvoir St Theatre, including “The Alchemist” and “The Popular

Mechanicals,” with Geoffrey Rush.

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JIM STURGESS (Adam Ewing, Poor Hotel Guest, Megan’s Dad, Highlander, Hae-Joo

Chang, Adam/Zachry’s Brother in Law) recently completed production on Giuseppe Tornatore’s

“The Best Offer,” starring opposite Geoffrey Rush, and “Ashes,” starring opposite Lesley

Manville. Later this year, he will also star opposite Kirsten Dunst in the sci-fi fantasy “Upside

Down.”

His other recent credits include Lone Scherfig’s “One Day,” opposite Anne Hathaway;

Zack Snyder’s “Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole”; Philip Ridley’s critically

acclaimed UK release "Heartless" ; and Peter Weir's fact-based “The Way Back,” starring

opposite Colin Farrell and Ed Harris.

Sturgess was previously seen in Kari Skogland's award-winning independent film “Fifty

Dead Men Walking,” starring opposite Sir Ben Kingsley in the drama based on Martin

McGartland's shocking real life as an undercover spy who infiltrated the IRA. The film

premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and Sturgess was nominated for the

2009 Vancouver Film Critics (VFC) Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Canadian

Film.

He also starred in Robert Luketic's 2008 box office hit “21,” alongside Kate Bosworth

and Kevin Spacey; “The Other Boleyn Girl,” opposite Natalie Portman; and with Evan Rachel

Wood in Julie Taymor’s critically acclaimed film “Across the Universe.”

Sturgess was nominated as the Best Newcomer by the Empire Film Awards in 2009.

DOONA BAE (Tilda, Megan’s Mom, Mexican Woman, Sonmi-451, Sonmi-351, Sonmi

Prostitute) has become a very familiar name in Korea in a short amount of time and is widely and

critically acclaimed for her film and television work. “Cloud Atlas” marks Bae’s first English

language film.

In 2000, she was honored with a Best New Actress Blue Dragon Award for her role in

“Barking Dogs Never Bite,” directed by Bong Joon-ho. Her other films include leading roles in

“Take Care of My Cat,” directed by Jung Jae-un, and Park Chan-wook’s “Sympathy for Mr.

Vengeance,” which both garnered her several festival awards and the AKOFIC Best Actress

Awards in 2001 and 2002. She also received a Director’s Cut Actress of the Year Award for her

performance in “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” in 2002, and again in 2006 for Bong Joon-ho’s

“The Host.”

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Bae also played lead roles in the Japanese films “Linda, Linda, Linda,” directed by

Nobuhiro Yamashita, and Koreeda Hirokazu’s “Air Doll.” For the latter, she was honored in

2010 as Best Actress at the Japanese Academy Awards, and in the same category at the Tokyo

Sports Movie Awards, Takasaki Film Festival, and Japan Professional Film Awards.

Already famous as a model in the Korean fashion industry, Bae made her screen debut in

the film “Ring” and subsequently played the lead in the Korean TV series “The School.”

BEN WHISHAW (Cabin Boy, Robert Frobisher, Store Clerk, Georgette, Tribesman)

reunites with Tom Tykwer for the third time, having previously starred in the lead role of Jean-

Baptiste Grenouille in Tykwer’s “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, ” based on the acclaimed

novel, for which he received the BAFTA Rising Star Nomination in 2007. He also starred

alongside Clive Owen and Naomi Watts in Tykwer’s action thriller “The International.” He will

next be seen in November as Q in the latest installment of the James Bond franchise, “Skyfall,”

starring Daniel Craig and Judi Dench.

Among his other feature film credits are “My Brother Tom,” for which he received a

British Independent Film Award in 2001 for Most Promising Newcomer in the title role; and

“I’m Not There,” portraying a young Bob Dylan, for which he was honored in 2008 by the

Independent Spirit Awards’ prestigious Robert Altman Award, shared with director Todd

Haynes and the cast, including Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere and Heath Ledger.

Most recently he was in Julian Jarrold’s “Brideshead Revisited,” and Julie Taymor’s “The

Tempest,” opposite Helen Mirren and Russell Brand.

Whishaw’s television performances include “Criminal Justice,” for which he received

both a 2009 Emmy Award for Best Performance by an Actor and the Royal Television Society,

UK (RTS) Award for Best Male Actor, in addition to a BAFTA TV Award nomination. His

other television performances include “Nathan Barley,” BBC’s “The Hour,” and most recently

the lead, alongside James Purefoy and Patrick Stewart in the BBC’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s

“Richard II.”

For the stage, Whishaw received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for his

performance as Hamlet in Trevor Nunn’s electric youth version of Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark

Materials,” at the Old Vic, having made his West End debut at the National Theatre in their stage

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adaptation. He also appeared at the National Theatre in Katie Mitchell’s 2006 version of “The

Seagull,” and 2008’s “The Idiot,” in which he played the lead.

A native of Hertfordshire, Whishaw graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

in 2003. Prior to drama school, he played supporting roles in the 1999 films “The Trench,”

directed by William Boyd and Michel Blanc’s “Mauvaise Passe.” After graduation he went on

to appear in Roger Michell’s “Enduring Love,” the film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel;

Matthew Vaughan’s “Layer Cake”; “The Booze Cruise”; and portrayed Keith Richards in

“Stoned.”

JAMES D’ARCY (Young Rufus Sixsmith, Old Rufus Sixsmith, Nurse James, Archivist)

will next be seen alongside Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Biel

playing the role of Anthony Perkins in “Hitchcock,” which follows the making of the famed

director’s “Psycho”; as well as the dramas “The Philosophers,” written and directed by John

Huddles, and “The Domino Effect.”

His most recent film credits include the independents “In Their Skin,” a thriller which

premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April; the comedy “Overnight”; and Madonna’s

historically based romance “W.E.,” in which he portrayed King Edward VIII, starring opposite

Abbie Cornish and Andrea Riseborough.

Among Darcy’s previous features are the drama “Screwed”; “Rise: Blood Hunter,”

starring Lucy Liu; “An American Haunting,” with Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland; Renny

Harlin’s “Exorcist: The Beginning”; Peter Weir’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the

World,” starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany; “Dot the I,” with Gael García Bernal and Tom

Hardy; and William Boyd’s war film “The Trench,” starring Daniel Craig.

D’Arcy graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in July 1995,

and quickly became a popular face on British screens with lead roles as Nicholas Hawthorne in

Ruth Rendell’s “Bribery and Corruption,” Lord Cheshire in “The Canterville Ghost” and

Jonathan Maybury in “The Ice House.” His additional television credits include the BBC hit

miniseries “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling”; “Sherlock Holmes: Case of Evil”; the

television series “POW”; and Stephen Whittaker’s “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas

Nickleby.” More recently, he starred as Tom Bertram in “Mansfield Park,” opposite Billie Piper,

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Hayley Atwell and Blake Ritson, and he has also had a recurring role in the hit series “The

Secret Diary of a Call Girl.”

In 2002, D’Arcy was nominated for the prestigious Ian Charleson Award for his portrayal

of Piers Gaveston in Michael Grandage’s production of “Edward II” at the Crucible Theatre,

where he performed opposite Joseph Fiennes and Lloyd Owen.

XUN ZHOU (Talbot/Hotel Manager, Yoona-939, Rose) is one of Asia’s most acclaimed

and admired actresses and the only Chinese actress to have won all the major Chinese-language

film awards, including China’s Hundred Flowers Awards, the Hong Kong Film Awards and

Hong Kong’s Golden Bauhinia Awards, Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards, and Asian Film

Awards, among others. Her performances have made her a household name in greater China and

earned her many accolades abroad.

She has performed in art house classics such as “Suzhou River,” “The Little Chinese

Seamstress” and “The Equation of Love & Death,” to such blockbuster hits as “Perhaps Love,”

with Takeshi Kaneshiro, Shakespeare’s “The Banquet,” starring Ziyi Zhang, “Painted Skin,”

with Donnie Yen, “The Message,” and “Confucius,” with Chow Yun-Fat.

More recently Zhou appeared alongside Michelle Yeoh in “True Legend” and recently

completed filming on “The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate,” with Jet Li, and “The Great

Magician,” with Tony Leung.

Zhou has become a champion for the environment and the Earth, pioneering “green

living” in China. In 2008, she was appointed United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP)

first national Goodwill Ambassador and initiated “Our Part,” an environmental awareness

campaign to influence China’s youth. For her continued efforts, UNDP honored her with the

Champions of the Earth Award in April 2010. She was the only female award winner of the

year, and the first winner from the entertainment industry.

In 2011, Zhou was elected as one of the Young Global Leaders by World Economic

Forum and spoke at the Summer Davos in Dalian, China.

KEITH DAVID (Kupaka, Napier, An-Kor-Apis, Prescient) has over 150 film, television

and stage credits to his name. Among his on-screen feature film roles are Oliver Stone’s

Academy Award®-winning “Platoon”; Clint Eastwood’s “Bird”; Paul Haggis’ Academy

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Award®-winning “Crash”; “There’s Something About Mary”; “Armageddon”; “Pitch Black”;

“The Chronicles of Riddick”; “Requiem for a Dream”; “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”; and “Barbershop.”

On television, David’s role in “The Tiger Woods Story” earned an Emmy Award

nomination. His other projects include TVOne’s “Belle’s” and NBC’s “The Cape,” guest-

starring arcs on “ER” and “7th Heaven” and appearances on “Law & Order” and “CSI.”

He has also been honored for his voice work, including Emmy Awards for Ken Burns’

“The War” and “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson,” and an Emmy

Award nomination for “Jazz.” David also lent his voice to the jazz singing, evil nemesis Dr.

Facilier in “Princess and The Frog,” released in December 2009, and the Black Cat in

“Coraline.” Internationally known as the voice behind Goliath from “Gargoyles” and the title

character in the “Spawn” animated series, he also voices Vhailor in the video game “Planescape:

Torment,” The Arbiter in “Halo 2,” and the wildly popular “Call To Duty: Modern Warfare 2.”

His other voiceover credits include A&E‘s “City Confidential,” U.S. Navy television

commercials, and the voice of Los Angeles’ 94.7 The WAVE’s smooth jazz.

On stage, the Juilliard voice and theatre student garnered a 1992 Tony Award nomination

for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his role in the classic Broadway play “Jelly's Last

Jam.” Some additional stage credits are: Sarah Pia Anderson’s revival of “Hedda Gabler” and

Lloyd Richards’ original Broadway staging of the late August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars.”

A native New Yorker, the accomplished singer/songwriter has his own band, which

currently performs with symphonies and orchestras across the country.

DAVID GYASI (Autua, Lester Rey, Duophysite) was most recently seen in the World

War II film “Red Tails,” based on John B. Holway’s Red Tails, Black Wings: The Men of

America's Black Air Force, starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. In 2005, he

portrayed Hutu school worker Francois, alongside John Hurt and Hugh Dancy in Michael Caton-

Jones’ “Beyond the Gates,” which chronicles BBC news producer David Belton’s experience in

a genocide-ridden Rwanda.

In addition to his many appearances on British television series he has also played

leading roles in the hit BBC One series “White Heat,” opposite Sam Claflin, Claire Foy and

Reece Ritchie, and ITV’s “Mike Bassett: Manager.”

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Gyasi trained at Middlesex University, studying arts and drama. In 2008, he took to the

stage in the National Theatre’s multi-award winning production of “War Horse,” playing the role

of Captain Stewart.

SUSAN SARANDON (Madame Horrox, Older Ursula, Yusouf Suleiman, Abbess )

brings her own brand of fierce intelligence to every role she plays, from her acclaimed, fearless

portrayal in “Bull Durham” to her Oscar®

-nominated performances in “Atlantic City,” “Thelma

& Louise,” “Lorenzo’s Oil” and “The Client,” to her Academy Award®-winning and Screen

Actors Guild (SAG) Award®

-winning work in “Dead Man Walking.”

Sarandon has also been honored for her distinguished work in television. Among her

numerous accolades, she recently received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead

Actress in a Miniseries for her role in the HBO film “Bernard and Doris,” as well as Golden

Globe and SAG® Award nominations in the same category. In 2010, Sarandon received Emmy

and SAG®

nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her role opposite Al Pacino in

HBO’s “You Don’t Know Jack,” directed by Barry Levinson. Her other HBO miniseries include

“Mussolini: The Decline and Fall of Il Duce,” opposite Bob Hoskins and Anthony Hopkins, and

James Lapine’s “Earthly Possessions,” based on the Anne Tyler novel.

Her more recent performances include the films “Jeff, Who Lives at Home”; “Wall Street

2: Money Never Sleeps,” for director Oliver Stone; and Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones.”

Sarandon also appeared on Broadway in 2009 in “Exit the King” with Geoffrey Rush, and in

Gore Vidal’s “An Evening with Richard Nixon.” She received critical acclaim for her Off-

Broadway turn in “A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talkin’” and the thriller

“Extremities,” and also appeared Off-Off-Broadway in the moving post-September 11th stage

play “The Guys.”

Among Sarandon’s additional feature credits are the Wachowskis’ “Speed Racer,”

“Enchanted,” Mr. Woodcock,” Paul Haggis’ “In the Valley of Elah,” Romance and Cigarettes,”

Cameron Crowe’s “Elizabethtown,” “Alfie,” “Shall We Dance?,” “Moonlight Mile,” “The

Banger Sisters,” “Igby Goes Down,” “Cradle Will Rock,” “Step Mom,” “Twilight,” “Safe

Passage,” “Little Women,” “Bob Roberts,” “Light Sleeper,” “White Palace,” “A Dry White

Season,” “The January Man,” “Sweet Hearts Dance,” “The Witches of Eastwick,”

“Compromising Positions,” “The Buddy System,” “The Hunger” and “King of the Gypsies.”

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Sarandon made her acting debut in the movie “Joe,” which she followed with a

continuing role in the TV daytime drama “A World Apart.” Her early film credits include “The

Great Waldo Pepper,” “Lovin’ Molly,” Billy Wilder’s “The Front Page,” the 1975 cult classic

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and Louis Malle’s controversial “Pretty Baby.”

In addition to her many on-screen credits, she lent her vocal talents to the animated

features “Rugrats in Paris,” “James and the Giant Peach,” and “Cats & Dogs,” and has provided

the narration for many documentaries, including Laleh Khadivi’s “900 Women,” about female

prison inmates.

Her other television credits include starring in “Ice Bound” as Dr. Jerri Nielson, based on

Nielson’s real life survival story; as Princess Wensicia Corrino in the Sci Fi Channel miniseries

“Children of Dune”; “The Exonerated,” directed by Bob Balaban; and “Women of Valor.” She

has also made guest appearances on “The Big C,” “30 Rock” and in the highly popular “Mother

Lover” video on “Saturday Night Live.”

HUGH GRANT (Rev. Giles Horrox, Hotel Heavy, Lloyd Hooks, Denholme Cavendish,

Seer Rhee, Kona Chief) is an award-winning actor who has received acclaim for his work in a

wide range of films, which have grossed more than $2.5 billion combined worldwide. He most

recently lent his voice to the lead role of The Pirate Captain in the animated film “The Pirates!

Band of Misfits,” and starred in “Did You Hear About the Morgans?”

His other credits include “Music and Lyrics”; “American Dreamz”; “Bridget Jones’s

Diary” and its sequel, “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”; the ensemble comedy hit “Love

Actually”; and “Two Weeks’ Notice.” He won a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA for his

performance in “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” and was nominated for Golden Globes for his

performances in “Notting Hill” and “About a Boy.” Among his many feature film credits

are “An Awfully Big Adventure,” “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a

Mountain,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Mickey Blue Eyes,” “Small Time Crooks,” and “Extreme

Measures,” which he also produced.

In addition to his Golden Globe and BAFTA honors, Grant has been awarded The Peter

Sellers Award for Comedy, Best Actor at The Venice Film Festival and an Honorary César

Award.

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An active supporter of the Hacked Off campaign, Grant’s other interests include art,

football, golf and cars.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

THE WACHOWSKIS (Writers/Directors/Producers) were born and raised in Chicago

and have been working together for more than 30 years. They wrote, directed and produced

“Speed Racer” and “The Matrix” trilogy. They also produced “Ninja Assassin,” and wrote and

produced “V for Vendetta,” for director James McTeigue.

In 1996, they wrote and directed their first feature film, “Bound.”

TOM TYKWER (Writer/Director/Producer/Composer) is one of Germany’s most

exciting filmmakers. In 1999, he made his international breakthrough with the adrenaline-fuelled

“Run Lola Run,” which, as well as directing, he also wrote and composed. The film, starring

Franka Potente, was both a commercial and critical success, going on to become the most

successful German film of that year.

He followed this with “The Princess and the Warrior,” again starring Franka Potente, and

then with his first English-language film, “Heaven,” starring Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi.

In 2006, Tykwer co-wrote and directed “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” starring Ben

Wishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman and Rachel Hurd-Wood, a sumptuous and provocative

adaptation of the seminal book. His next film was the sleek thriller “The International,” with

Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Most recently he completed the German language film “3”

(“Drei”).

Tykwer’s earlier films include “Winter Sleepers” and his feature film directorial debut,

“Deadly Maria.”

DAVID MITCHELL (Novel) is the author of Cloud Atlas. Published in 2004, his

celebrated third novel was a Man Booker Prize finalist.

Mitchell’s most recent novel, the international bestseller The Thousand Autumns of Jacob

de Zoet was named a best book of the year by Time, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The

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New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, and The New York Times, and his 2006 novel, Black Swan

Green, was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by Time.

His first novel, Ghostwritten, was awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys

Prize for best book by a writer under thirty-five and was short-listed for the Guardian First Book

Award. Number9Dream, published in 2001, was short-listed for the Man Booker as well as the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2007.

He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.

GRANT HILL (Producer) was recently nominated for an Academy Award® for Best

Picture for Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.”

His previous producing credits include “Ninja Assassin,” “Speed Racer,” “V For

Vendetta” and “The Thin Red Line,” for which he was nominated for an Academy Award® for

Best Picture.

He was a co-producer on “Titanic” and an executive producer on “The Matrix

Revolutions” and “The Matrix Reloaded.”

STEFAN ARNDT (Producer) has produced more than 20 films, receiving 30 German

Film Awards, ten European Film Awards, 13 Bavarian Film Awards and one César Award.

In 1994, Arndt founded the production company X Filme Creative Pool with Tom

Tykwer, Wolfgang Becker and Dani Levy, where he is currently managing director. Under this

banner he has produced Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon,” which was nominated for an

Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film and received a Golden Globe Award for Best

Foreign Film, European and German Film awards, and the 2009 Cannes Palme D’Or. More

recently, he was a producer on “Quellen des Lebens,” by Oskar Roehler, and “Amour,” by

Michael Haneke, which won the Palme D’Or at Cannes this year.

Arndt began his film career running a movie theatre in Berlin in the ‘80s, during which

time he met Tom Tykwer. He subsequently produced Tykwer’s feature directorial debut,

“Deadly Maria,” as well as “Winter Sleepers,” “Run Lola Run,” “The Princess and the Warrior,”

“Heaven” and “3.” He has also produced Wolfgang Becker’s “Life Is All You Get” and the

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successful “Goodbye Lenin.” His other producing credits include Dani Levy’s “Silent Night,”

“The Giraffe” and “The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler.”

In 2000, Arndt founded X Verleih AG, together with Manuela Stehr, to distribute films in

Germany.

From 2003 to 2009 Arndt was chairman of the German Film Academy, which he was

also instrumental in founding, as well as a member of the board of the Allianz Deutscher

Produzenten Film & Fernsehen (Association of Production Companies), an organization that

supports the interests of filmmakers in Germany.

PHILIP LEE (Executive Producer) holds a Bachelor of Arts in Directing from the

College of Arts at Nihon University in Japan, a Diploma in Management of Executive

Development from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a Master of Fine Arts in Producing

from The American Film Institute (AFI), and a Doctorate in Business Administration from Hong

Kong Polytechnic University.

From 1987 to 1993, Lee ran the Production Department at Salon Films Hong Kong.

While at Salon Films, he was the Asian unit production manager on more than 20 Hollywood

films and numerous television productions, including the features “Dragon: The Bruce Lee

Story” and “M. Butterfly,” and the television series “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

After returning to Asia in 1996 from his studies in the United States, Lee received

associate producer or line producer credits for his work on successful feature films such as Chen

Kaige’s “The Emperor and the Assassin,” Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Zhang

Yimou’s “Hero,” Ronny Yu’s “Fearless,” Jan de Bont’s “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of

Life,” and Rob Minkoff’s “Forbidden Kingdom.” He was also the executive producer for

Korean director Kwak Jae-yong’s “Windstruck.” In 2008, he served as line producer for the

Hong Kong portion of Chris Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.”

Lee financed and produced Chinese director Xie Dong’s “One Summer with You,” which

received the Best Asian Film Award at 2007’s Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival.

In 2007 Lee set up Javelin Pictures, a production company based in Beijing, as a vehicle

to produce viable cross-cultural film projects.

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UWE SCHOTT (Executive Producer) has been Managing Director at X Filme Creative

Pool GmbH since October 2009.

He previously served as Managing Partner of Modern Media Filmproduktion GmbH,

which made numerous TV productions, as well as Managing Director of various film funds

responsible for the accurate execution of American productions such as “Walk the Line,” “The

Fast and The Furious,” “Star Trek XI” and many others, and representing German producers

with his production company, Oberon.

Born in Dusseldorf, Schott worked as a unit manager and later as production manager for

various German production companies before serving as a line producer for several productions

in Los Angeles. He then returned to Germany where he was a producer and managing director at

various production companies.

WILSON QIU (Executive Producer) is the Chairman and CEO of Dreams of The

Dragon Pictures Co., Ltd. Once a public servant in Chinese government, he ventured into

industrial investment in 2001 and subsequently initiated the Dreams of The Dragon Film Fund

and drafted film projects.

His main theatrical works include serving as producer on “Adventure of the King” and

“Heaven Eternal, Earth Everlasting” in 2010, and “The Man Behind the Courtyard House” in

2011.

The company’s upcoming projects include “The Old Summer Palace,” an epic film in

two parts, featuring a romance during a disaster event, and the Asian remake of “Les uns et les

Autres (Within Memory),” which was nominated for the Palme d’Or and won Technical Grand

Prize in 1981 at the Cannes Film Festival.

JOHN TOLL (Director of Photography) is one of only two cinematographers to win

consecutive Oscars®: for “Legends of the Fall” in 1994 and for “Braveheart” in 1995. He was

also nominated for an Oscar® for his work on “The Thin Red Line” in 1998. Toll has been

nominated for five American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Awards and has won two. He

is also the recipient of a BAFTA Award and a New York Film Critics Circle Award.

Toll’s most recent credits include “It’s Complicated,” starring Meryl Streep, Alec

Baldwin and Steve Martin; “The Adjustment Bureau,” starring Matt Damon; and “The Odd Life

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of Timothy Green,” starring Jennifer Garner. He is currently in production on “Iron Man 3,”

starring Robert Downey Jr.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Toll began his career as a camera operator on such films as

“The Last Waltz,” “Norma Rae” and “Urban Cowboy.” His additional credits as director of

photography include “Wind,” “The Rainmaker,” “Almost Famous,” “Captain Corelli’s

Mandolin,” “Vanilla Sky,” “The Last Samurai,” “Elizabethtown,” “Seraphim Falls,” “Rise,”

“Gone Baby Gone,” “Tropic Thunder” and “The Burning Plain.” He also served as director of

photography on the pilot episode of the acclaimed AMC television series “Breaking Bad,” for

which he received an Emmy Award nomination.

FRANK GRIEBE (Director of Photography) has received numerous accolades for his

work as a cinematographer, including the German Film Award in Gold and the European Film

Award for Best Cinematographer for his work on Tom Tykwer’s “Perfume: The Story of a

Murderer.”

He was also awarded the German Film Prize for Tykwer’s “Run Lola Run” in 1999 and

again in 1998 for “Winter Sleepers.” In addition, Griebe photographed Tykwer’s “The Princess

and the Warrior,” for which he was nominated for the 2001 European Film Awards, and

“Heaven,” which garnered a German Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography,

as well as nominations for a German Camera Award and European Film Award. His more

recent collaborations with Tykwer were “The International” and “3 (Drei),” which premiered at

the 2010 Venice Film Festival.

Among his many other credits are “Trains’n’Roses,” which earned him a German Film

Award; Sebastian Schipper’s directing debut, “Gigantics”; Doris Dörrie’s “Naked”; and Leander

Haussmann’s “Berlin Blues.” Recently, he shot Helmut Dietl’s “Zettl,” and the documentaries

“Play Your Own Thing: A Story of Jazz in Europe,” “A Summer’s Fairytale” and “Longing for

Beauty.”

Born in Hamburg, Griebe began his career as an apprentice film processor. From 1984 to

1986 he trained to become a state-recognized camera assistant and subsequently spent seven

years working with cameramen such as Herbert Müller, Michael Teutsch, Jürgen Jürges and

Erling-Thurmann Andersen on film and television productions, documentaries and commercials.

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His many honors include the 1993 Kodak Prize, the 1994 German Camera Prize and the 1995

student prize at the Manaki Brothers Camera Festival in Bitola.

ULI HANISCH (Production Designer) is one of the top production designers working in

Germany today and was awarded the Bavarian, German and European Film Awards for Best

Production Design in 2007 for his work on Tom Tykwer’s “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.”

Previously, he collaborated with Tykwer on “Winter Sleepers,” “The Princess and the

Warrior,” ”Heaven” and his latest film, “3” (Drei).

In 2001, Hanisch designed “The Experiment,” for which he was awarded the German

Film Prize for Best Production Design. In 2008, he went to Budapest to design the medieval

horror feature “Season of the Witch,” starring Nicolas Cage. Most recently, he designed the

period comedy “Hotel Lux,” directed by Leander Haussmann. In 2011, Hanisch designed his

first theatre production at the Volksbühne in Berlin, also directed by Haussmann.

Hanisch was born in Nuremberg. While studying visual communication in Düsseldorf, he

worked as a graphic designer for advertising agencies. In 1987, he began his collaboration with

Christoph Schlingensief on his experimental films, including “The German Chainsaw Massacre,”

“Terror 2000” and “United Trash.” Among his many other credits, Hanisch designed for

Germany’s exceptional comedian Helge Schneider’s “00-Schneider – Jagd auf Nihil Baxter” and

“Praxis Dr. Hasenbein”; Sönke Wortmann’s “Das Wunder von Bern”; and the historical tragedy

“Stauffenberg,” for German television.

He was the art director on such films as “Aimée & Jaguar” and “Schlaraffenland,” and

worked in the art department for such major European productions as Peter Greenaway´s “The

Baby of Macon” and “Tykho Moon,” by Enki Bilal.

Hanisch has also been teaching at the production design education program at the

International Film School (IFS) in Cologne for nearly a decade.

HUGH BATEUP (Production Designer) has been a supervising art director on numerous

productions, including The Wachowskis’ “The Matrix Reloaded,” ”The Matrix Revolutions”

and “Speed Racer,” and Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns.” “Cloud Atlas” marks his first

feature film as production designer.

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Bateup began his career in the film industry as a construction laborer in his native

Australia, on the film “The Man from Snowy River.” He worked in this capacity and, later, as a

construction manager on Australian TV shows and feature films.

In 1989, he landed his first job as an art director on “The Big Steal.” He continued for a

decade in this role on more than 15 Australian and foreign films, including “Muriel’s Wedding,”

“Angel Baby,” “Cosi” and “The Matrix.”

ALEXANDER BERNER (Editor) previously collaborated with Tom Tykwer on the

period thriller “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” for which he won a German Film Award for

Best Editing. In 1996, Berner won his first German Film Award for his editing work on the film

“Schlafes Bruder” (“Brother of Sleep”) and the documentary “Wie die Zeit Vergeht” (“As the

Time Passes”).

He most recently edited Paul W. S. Anderson’s action adventure “The Three

Musketeers,” starring Mila Jovovich and Matthew MacFadyen. Berner previously edited

Anderson’s “AVP: Alien vs. Predator” and “Resident Evil.” Among his other film credits are

“The Debt,” starring Helen Mirren”; Roland Emmerich’s “10,000 B.C”; “The Calling”; and

“Prince Valiant.”

Born and raised in Munich, Berner spent time in Israel and later London, where he

trained in computer graphics and then worked as a film and video editor at New Decade

Productions Ltd. He concentrated on corporate films, documentaries and commercials,

eventually working on music videos for MTV. After directing a documentary about a multi-

cultural rock band in San Francisco in 1988, Berner returned to Germany to work as a sound and

picture editor.

KYM BARRETT (Costume Designer) began her career in the theater as a set and

costume designer. After designing costumes for her first film, “Romeo + Juliet,” she came to the

United States where she designed for the feature “Zero Effect,” and was subsequently hired by

the Wachowskis for their worldwide blockbuster “The Matrix” trilogy. She also collaborated

with them on “Speed Racer.”

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Among her other credits are “Three Kings,” “Red Planet,” “From Hell,” “Gothika,”

“Monster-in-Law,” “Rumor Has It...,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “Green Hornet” and,

most recently, “The Amazing Spider-Man.”

The Metropolitan Opera’s production of “The Tempest” marks Barrett’s second

collaboration with Robert Lepage. She previously designed costumes in 2011 for his Cirque Du

Soleil’s “Totem.”

PIERRE-YVES GAYRAUD (Costume Designer) is one of France’s most sought-after

costume designers with over 40 films to his credit. He is perhaps best known in the U.S. for two

large-scale productions, Regis Wargnier’s Oscar®

-winning “Indochine” and Doug Liman’s “The

Bourne Identity.”

As the costume designer on Tom Tykwer’s “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” he won

the German Film in Gold Award for Best Costume. He went on to design two segments of the

episodic “Paris, je t’aime” for Tykwer and the Coen brothers.

His other notable feature film credits include “Total Eclipse,” directed by Agniezka

Holland and starring Leonardo Di Caprio; Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Two Brothers,” starring Guy

Pearce; and “The Countess,” directed by Julie Delpy, who also starred with William Hurt.

More recently he designed the costumes for the 3D film “The Three Musketeers,”

directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich and Orlando Bloom; Rodrigo

Garcia’s “Albert Nobbs,” starring Glenn Close; and Charlie Stratton’s upcoming “Therese

Raquin,” starring Elizabeth Olsen, Jessica Lange and Tom Felton.

DAN GLASS (Visual Effects Supervisor) joined Method Studios in 2010 as Senior

Creative Director overseeing both feature and commercial projects and in 2011 was appointed

Executive Vice President for Method’s global network of visual effects studios with offices in

Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York, London, Sydney and Melbourne.

“Cloud Atlas” marks his fifth collaboration with the Wachowskis, having previously

supervised visual effects on “The Matrix: Reloaded,” for which Glass won a Visual Effects

Society Award, “The Matrix: Revolutions,” “V for Vendetta” and “Speed Racer.”

For his work on Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster “Batman Begins,” Glass received both

BAFTA and Saturn Award nominations for Best Visual Effects. He most recently was a Senior

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Visual Effects Supervisor on Terrence Malick’s Oscar®

-nominated “The Tree of Life,” which

also won the Palme D’Or at Cannes.

After completing a degree in architecture at University College London, Glass began his

career at the Computer Film Company in London, serving in various capacities as a designer, CG

artist, programmer and compositor. Among his many credits are “Mission: Impossible,”

“Mission: Impossible II,” “The Beach,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “The Bone Collector,” “Notting Hill,”

and “Tomorrow Never Dies.”

TOM TYKWER (Composer) See Writer/Director/Producer entry above.

JOHNNY KLIMEK (Composer) previously collaborated with Tom Tykwer on the

breakthrough hit “Run Lola Run,” “The Princess and the Warrior,” “Perfume: The Story of a

Murderer,” “The International” and “3” (Drei). These scores, along with much of his output over

the last decade, were created in collaboration with his former longtime creative partner, Reinhold

Heil.

Among his recent credits are “Killer Elite” and the TV series “Awake.” Up next is “I,

Frankenstein,” starring Bill Nighy and Aaron Eckhart, slated for release in February, as well as

the documentary “Open Heart.”

Klimek previously scored “One Hour Photo,” “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days,” “Land of

the Dead,” “The Cave,” “Blood and Chocolate,” “One Missed Call,” “Blackout,” and

“Tomorrow, When the World Began.”

He has also scored more than 30 episodes of the acclaimed TV series “Deadwood,” and

composed the theme song for “Without a Trace.” His additional television credits include

“Locke and Key,” “John from Cincinnati,” and “Iron Jawed Angels.”

Born in Australia, Klimek paid his dues in a series of gritty pub bands before migrating to

Berlin to form the ‘80s pop ensemble “The Other Ones” with his siblings. He segued into the

club music scene on his own in the ’90s, and, out of the latter emerged his creative marriages to

both Heil and Tykwer. The worldwide success of the “Run Lola Run” score catalyzed his move

to Los Angeles and the establishment of his Echo Park studio. Since then, he has seen a steady

stream of cinematically striking projects.

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REINHOLD HEIL (Composer) was born in a small town in West Germany and trained

to become a classical pianist. While studying at the Berlin Music Academy, Heil became Nina

Hagen’s keyboardist, co-writer, and co-producer and for the next few years honed his craft in

what became the legendary Nina Hagen Band. After Hagen left the group, the remaining band

members formed Spliff, one of Germany’s most successful rock bands of the 1980s.

In the mid-1990s, Heil became friends with Australian Johnny Klimek, later joining

creative forces with him to compose a number of hybrid trip-hop tunes. The two then

collaborated with Tom Tykwer, joining him in scoring his second feature, “Winter Sleepers.”

Two years later the trio scored “Run Lola Run,” their breakthrough hit with a pioneering high-

energy electronic score which brought them to the attention of Hollywood.

In addition to their lasting creative association with Tykwer, spanning six previous films,

most notably “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” and “The International,” Heil and Klimek

have collaborated on dozens of film and television scores. These include the award-winning

music video director Mark Romanek’s “One Hour Photo,” starring Robin Williams; the Golden

Globe-nominated film “Iron Jawed Angels” and the series “Deadwood” and “John From

Cincinnati” for HBO; cult horror film director George Romero’s “Land Of The Dead”; “Sophie

Scholl: The Final Days,” which was nominated for an Oscar® for Best Foreign film; action

thriller “Killer Elite,” starring Jason Statham, Robert De Niro and Clive Owen; and last season’s

NBC series “Awake.” They also wrote the theme and scored numerous episodes of the

television series “Without A Trace,” for which they won seven ASCAP Awards.

Heil continues to collaborate with Klimek on selected projects while working primarily

as an individual composer.