February 15, 2005 - Rachel Weisz's star has been on the rise for a few years now. Although the actress hails from the U.K., many of her characters, including those portrayed in Confidence, Runaway Jury and The Shape of Things, have been distinctly American. After breaking out in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, the multi-talented actress is about to get a chance to further expand her following in the sci-fi/horror genre world by playing Angela Dodson (as well as twin sister Isabel) in Constantine.

Weisz plays Detective Angela Dodson. After the apparent suicide of her twin sister Isabel, a devout Catholic, Dodson hopes to prove that Isabel couldn't possibly have killed herself. Although Angela doesn't believe in the occult, she seeks the help of Constantine in hopes that he can provide answers to some very mysterious events. She is soon introduced to a world she never imagined, or at least one that she had hoped was only a myth.

IGNFF spoke with Weisz recently at the press day for Constantine in Los Angeles. Weisz is now midway through the production of Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and her look for that film is a bit startling at first. Weisz has very closely-cropped dark hair, a sweater and a pink poodle-type skirt.

Some may be surprised to learn that Weisz is actually a Brit after all the American characters she's played. While I had heard this before, it was a bit surprising hearing her real speaking voice for the first time. "When I'm playing a character, I use the American accent. But when I go back to England, I just glide right back into Englishness immediately... Every actor uses a dialect coach. Every actor, and if they say they don't, they're lying. Everybody does, yeah. You don't want to worry about it. You have someone listening out to check that you're not straying."

In Constantine, Angela plays both Rachel and Isabel. After her sister's apparent suicide, Angela must go face to face with her dead self. "It's really strange, because it's really, the technology, the craftsmanship, it looked real to me. It was me, but dead. It was slightly paler. I went to a morgue as part of my research for the character. I'd never seen dead bodies before, but that's how they look. They get slightly sunken and grey. So yeah, it was not your average, everyday experience."

Admittedly, there are some fun possibilities possessing a life size replica of yourself. "I could drive in the car pool lane. Wouldn't that be great? I've never seen Weekend at Bernie's, but I love the trailer. What a great premise. Is it fun? There are two? I'm going to rent that movie."

	-Warner Brothers A damp Weisz with Reeves

About her character, Weisz says, "Angela is an LAPD homicide detective, so I had to do lots of research and I had a crash course from an ex-cop here in LA. He took me to the firing range and took me to the morgue and beyond that there was a lot of research. So the character became quite fleshed out; quite grounded. And then the other character was just someone who was thought to be mentally ill so she's in a hospital. That stuff I didn't have to research because I'm crazy, so that was easy, I knew how to do that."

Just about everyone seems to have a different take on the religious aspects of Constantine's premise. We asked Weisz about her take: "What do I think about the theology? Well, it's definitely fantastical, supernatural, entertaining movie, but it's housed within a very traditional, I guessed you'd say kind of Judaic Christian mythology or theology I should say. And I thought that grounded it in something very interesting and I thought it asked some very interesting questions about morality, good and evil and free will and pre-destination and how much is up to us and how much is God's plan and the struggle between man trying to make a choice to do good and evil and fate intervening. You know, big unanswerable questions which people have been asking for thousands of years, since religion was begotten. I guess it will carry on after, but they're big old questions."

	-Warner Brothers Weisz as Isabel

Weisz's character is thrown right into the thick of things throughout Constantine. In a scene where John Constantine is trying to show Angela hell, he holds her underwater in a bathtub. On film, it looked as though Weisz was actually down there for quite some time. "Gosh, [it was] a really long time. I wasn't really timing it, but I guess like a minute and a half. The director said that he wanted Keanu not to go easy on me, for it to look real. So he was really holding me down. It was scary."