Taglines: How far would you go to keep a secret?
Revolution Studios’ sexy thriller “Perfect Stranger” asks the question: How far would you go to keep a secret? When investigative reporter Rowena Price (Halle Berry) learns that her friend’s murder might be connected to powerful ad executive Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), she goes undercover with the help of her associate, Miles Hailey (Giovanni Ribisi).
“Perfect Stranger” focuses on Rowena Price (Halle Berry), a reporter for a major New York City newspaper who goes undercover to investigate the unsolved murder of one of her childhood friends. The path leads her directly into the office and the personal life of multi-millionaire Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), CEO of a powerful advertising agency. Investigating him from all angles, Rowena assumes new identities in life and on line. She then harnesses the devastatingly effective tools of cyberspace in an attempt to bring her victim to justice.
Perfect Stranger is a 2007 American neo-noir psychological thriller film, directed by James Foley, and starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis in their first film together since 1991’s The Last Boy Scout. It was produced by Revolution Studios for Columbia Pictures. Some of the scenes were filmed in the lobby of the new 7 World Trade Center, before its opening in March 2006.
About the Story
This is a movie about secrets. Those we have. Those we share. And those we’ll do anything to protect. Rowena Price (Halle Berry) is an investigative reporter who has perfected the art of exposing other people’s secrets. So when childhood friend Grace Clayton, who was having an affair with married advertising executive Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), turns up murdered, Rowena is determined to find the truth.
Thanks to her associate, tech-savvy Miles Haley (Giovanni Ribisi), Rowena gains access to Grace’s e-mail and learns that Grace was threatening to go to Hill’s wife. Armed with that knowledge, Rowena goes undercover and becomes the perfect stranger – first as a temp, Katherine, in Hill’s advertising agency, and then as Rocketgirl aka Veronica, another one of his online paramours. She watches the unsuspecting Hill from all sides, taking note of his wife doing the same. This is a man with an appetite for power, a weakness for women, and a wife on alert.
But in exposing Hill’s secrets Ro unwittingly discovers a connection between Grace and two significant people in her life; her boyfriend, Cameron (Gary Dourdan) and her best friend, Miles, leaving her feeling confused, betrayed, and with no one to trust on this journey. The closer Ro gets to the truth, the more we begin to ask: What was this secret Grace had? And why would someone kill to protect it? In a film about secrets and advertising, not everything is as it seems.
About the Film
“To a certain extent, everybody lives a double life,” says Academy Award®-winner Halle Berry, star of Revolution Studios’ sexy new thriller, Perfect Stranger. “We’re all complicated beings; we’re different people all the time – for example, a woman might act differently at work than she does at home. We all hide something, even from our best friends. This movie highlights that and takes it to the next level, showing what we’re capable of when we’re forced to come to terms with it.”
For director James Foley, who has previously explored such territory in the psychological thrillers At Close Range, Fear, and Glengarry Glen Ross, the idea goes even further. “Everybody lies; it just depends on how big the lie is and what the consequences of the lie are,” says the director. “I’m fascinated by the idea that people sometimes act in ways that they don’t realize what they’re doing – the audience understands the character’s behavior, but the character himself does not. In addition, a character’s double life lends itself to something that the cinema is uniquely designed to do: you can see and hear a character saying or doing something and realize that they’re thinking something completely different.”
“We live in a world in which nothing is as it seems,” says producer Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. “We believe things at face value, but we are living in an age in which we ought to be more cautious. We should ask questions about the world around us, whether we’re receiving a diagnosis from a doctor or buying a product at the supermarket or meeting a person online.
“It’s not coincidental that this film is set in an advertising agency,” Goldsmith-Thomas continues. “Things are packaged as the perfect product, but we know that nothing is perfect, most especially strangers, who can present one face but can hide so many others.”
According to Goldsmith-Thomas, the idea for Perfect Stranger came out of a conversation with her husband, co-producer Daniel A. Thomas. “We thought that the idea of online anonymity where anyone can be anyone was a provocative theme to explore. It’s a dangerous gamble to presume that the person we’re speaking to online is who they say they are. So, we started kicking around stories about what would happen when a person’s virtual world collides with his real world. And Perfect Stranger was born.”
From the early stages, Berry saw the possibilities in Perfect Stranger and jumped on board. “We couldn’t imagine anyone else in this role,” says Goldsmith- Thomas. “She loved what we wanted to do, where we wanted to take it. Knowing that she was playing a character who was playing a character, she looked at scenes from every angle to make sure there were no loose ends. We were blessed to have her as our partner.”
Berry found herself attracted to the character, which, she says, is unlike any she’s ever played before – except for one common thread. “I love playing tortured characters,” says the Academy Award-winning actress. “I don’t know what that says about me, but I really love getting into the mind of someone who’s a bit buffeted, a bit battered. This character is very vulnerable, but she’s also very alive, and she finds her power little by little throughout the course of the movie. That’s something wonderful to play.”
“You can’t fully appreciate the complexity of Halle’s performance,” says Goldsmith-Thomas, “until you go back and watch the film a second time. When you do, you realize that there were clues all along and reactions you might have missed the first go round. Essentially, she had to play this character on three different levels: one as Rowena Price, one as Katherine Pogue, and another as Veronica. We would watch her alter each performance based on which mask she was putting on. It was nothing short of remarkable.”
“I think Ro is a really good actress,” Berry continues. “Because of her job as an investigative reporter, Ro has become very good at pretending, wearing different faces, chameleon-like. For her, it’s a way to survive; she’s a woman on a mission.”
As a result, Berry feels that, in a way, she is playing three different characters in the film. “There’s the Ro she is when she’s with Miles, her ‘guy Friday,’ which is really an act. Miles has a crush on her that she doesn’t return, but she knows how to work it to get what she wants. Second, there’s Katherine – the temp she poses as at Harrison Hill’s advertising agency; she dresses differently, talks differently, has a whole different feeling to her. Finally, there’s the real Ro – the Ro she rarely shows, who’s in maybe five scenes in the movie.”
Foley praises Berry’s ability to portray the character’s double (or triple) life. “Halle is playing a character, and the character is acting,” he points out. “We have to believe the character’s performance as well as Halle’s performance as the character. The way she was able to flip back and forth between the different aspects of her character amazed me.”
Then, of course, there’s the Ro that she is with Harrison Hill – the Ro that is trying to prove that the advertising exec killed her friend. “Harrison Hill will do anything to succeed,” Berry says, “and Ro will do anything to survive. The needs of one are based purely on ambition, and the needs of the other are based on our primal need to stay alive.”
Berry says that working with Bruce Willis, who plays Hill, was an inspiring experience. “Bruce likes to improvise a lot – flying by the seat of his pants,” she says. “That was a new element for me, but really great. He had a real handle on and what motivates him.”
“Bruce is not only an international movie star, he’s also a great actor,” says Goldsmith-Thomas. “He grounds our movie by layering his performance with humanity. On the surface, Hill’s an operator,” she says, “a bully, a womanizer, but Bruce plays this character with such integrity and honesty that Hill becomes the one you root for. We admire the fact that he lives out loud, unapologetic with his passions and emotions.”
“There’s a complex contradiction to this character that appeals to me,” says Goldsmith-Thomas. “Hill’s an ad man, adept at glossy packaging and persuasive spin, and yet, ironically, he accepts people at face value, and is shocked when their image differs from reality. So when his colleague betrays him, or when he discovers Katherine’s (Ro’s) ulterior motive, he is morally hurt, never realizing the hypocrisy. There is such an honesty to his reaction that we quickly forgive him his own lies and instead share his outrage. That is what makes Bruce’s performance so brilliant.”
Although Willis is probably best-known as an action star, Foley says he has always had an affinity for the actor’s work in thrillers. “When Bruce is doing straight dramatic acting, he’s very effective,” says Foley. “He came in, put on the right clothes, and became this character – the powerful, arrogant, lustful head of an ad agency.”
“I don’t think any guy ever thinks of himself as a womanizer,” says Willis. “I think he loves women, he’s at the height of his career as a captain of the advertising industry, and he doesn’t judge himself. I’m in my own middle age now, and I still get a big kick out of life; I think Harrison Hill also gets a big kick out of his life.”
Part of that kick was the chance to work alongside Halle Berry. “I seldom get parts where I get to flirt so unabashedly,” laughs Willis. “Not a hard day at the office – go to work and flirt with Halle Berry.”
“I think it’s easy to come into this movie and say, ‘This character’s a womanizer, this character’s a sycophant, this character’s an upwardly mobile young woman.’ But everybody has something to hide,” concludes Willis.
Rounding out the cast is Giovanni Ribisi, who plays Rowena’s techie Man Friday, Miles, who clearly has a crush on his boss – one that Ro is all too happy to exploit. “The way Giovanni plays the character, he’s just happy to be in Halle’s presence,” says Foley. “I can understand that – I’d be Halle’s intern, too.”
Ribisi considers Miles, like the other characters in Perfect Stranger, to be living a double life – or, at least, wearing a mask. “He’s the Iago character – he’s titillated by being manipulative,” says the actor. “Like Halle’s and Bruce’s characters, there’s a dark underside to him, and I think that’s universal; I don’t think that’s to be criticized.”
“Every character in this film has a secret and a different motivation that drives them to find truth,” says Goldsmith-Thomas. “Miles is a puzzler – he won’t stop until all the pieces fit. Interestingly enough, Giovanni is the same way. He worked on his character tirelessly, adding dimension, humanity, and pathos. I loved watching him become Miles. I loved working with him.”
Ribisi was attracted to the role by the screenplay’s morally ambiguous storyline. “In movies,” Ribisi says, “we’ve historically tended to focus on what’s good and what’s evil, but that becomes so black and white. In the rehearsal process for this film, we were talking about the fact that we’re trying to get away from that – people are more complicated. Everybody has their demons.”
“Giovanni’s character, in a way, is the everyman,” says Goldsmith-Thomas. “He wouldn’t say he has secrets, he would say he has fantasies. In some ways, this movie is about the justification we give ourselves that our actions are acceptable. It’s about how we go about our lives without being appalled by our own actions,” says Goldsmith-Thomas.
For screenwriter Todd Komarnicki, that disquieting subject matter formed the backbone of Perfect Stranger. “Someone once said,” he explains, “that the beauty of honesty is that you don’t have to remember what you said – if you’ve told the truth, you don’t remember your cover. I don’t think people are afraid enough of the cost of dishonesty. This movie is an immorality tale; it’s about the cost of these little compromises we make with ourselves that we don’t think about, but add up to an ultimate punishment.”
According to Goldsmith-Thomas, director James Foley was the perfect choice to bring the film to the screen. “He understands the intricacy of the world of shadows,” she says. “He gets that we all present only a certain face to the world. This is a movie about duality – the face we present and the face we keep hidden.”
“This movie tries to explore the limits of human behavior – the lengths that people will go to keep the truth hidden,” says Foley. “The French filmmaker Robert Bresson once said something like, ‘The director’s job is to make visible that which you might never have seen.’ That’s always stuck with me – each human being has an insight into what it is to be human that other human beings don’t. To make a film is to reveal what it is to be human. When somebody else gets it and thinks about that in a new way – that’s the ultimate thrill for me.”
“The great thing about James Foley, from an actor’s perspective, is that he’s so intuitive about when a performance is working,” says Berry. “When you do something real, something good, something organic, he has a real, good, organic response. That’s inspiring – it makes you feel like you’ll go wherever he wants to go because he’s so enthusiastic about it. When it’s not right, he doesn’t have that reaction – he’ll say, ‘Okay, that was good. But let’s do it again,’ and you’ll know.”
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Perfect Stranger (2007)
Directed by: James Foley
Starring: Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi, Gary Dourdan, Patti D’Arbanville, Clea Lewis, Nicki Aycox, Florencia Lozano, Daniella Van Graas, Kathleen Chalfant, Paula Miranda, Amara Zaragoza
Screenplay by: Todd Komarnicki
Production Design by: Bill Groom
Cinematography by: Anastas N. Michos
Film Editing by: Christopher Tellefsen
Costume Design by: Renee Ehrlich Kalfus
Set Decoration by: Susan Bode
Art Direction by: Charley Beal
Music by: Antonio Pinto
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, nudity, some disturbing violent images, language.
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: April 13, 2007
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