“Be without fear in the face of your enemies.

Speak the truth, always, even if it leads

to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong. That is your oath…”

Director Ridley Scott is the master of epic cinematic storytelling with a deeply personal
core, as he has shown in films like Gladiator, Blade Runner, and Black Hawk Down. In
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN he now turns to the Crusades—that world-shaping 200-year collision
between Europe and the East—to frame the tale of a young Frenchman who discovers his destiny
as a knight, then lives out what that glorious title really means.
Orlando Bloom stars as Balian, a blacksmith who has lost his family and nearly lost his
faith. The religious wars raging in the far-off Holy Land seem remote to him, yet he is pulled
into that immense drama. Amid the pageantry and intrigues of medieval Jerusalem he falls in
love, grows into a leader, and ultimately uses all his courage and skill to defend the city against
staggering odds.
Destiny comes seeking Balian in the form of a great knight, Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam
Neeson), a Crusader briefly home to France from fighting in the East. Revealing himself as
Balian’s father, Godfrey shows him the true meaning of knighthood and takes him on a journey
across continents to the fabled Holy City.
In Jerusalem at that moment—between the Second and Third Crusades—a fragile peace
prevails, through the efforts of its enlightened Christian king, Baldwin IV, aided by his advisor
Tiberias (Jeremy Irons), and the military restraint of the legendary Muslim leader Saladin
(Ghassan Massoud). But Baldwin’s days are numbered, and strains of fanaticism, greed, and
jealousy among the Crusaders threaten to shatter the truce.
King Baldwin’s vision of peace—a “kingdom of heaven”—is shared by a handful of
knights, including Godfrey of Ibelin, who swear to uphold it with their lives and honor. As
Godfrey passes his sword to his son, he also passes on that sacred oath: to protect the helpless,
safeguard the peace, and work toward harmony between religions and cultures, so that a
kingdom of heaven can flourish on earth.
Balian takes the sword and steps into history.
 From Ridley Scott, the master of the modern epic, comes Kingdom of Heaven, which tells
the sweeping saga of the Crusades through the eyes of one man caught up in an epic struggle for
an ideal. Using historical events as a backdrop for an intimate human drama, Scott, who directed
the Academy Award®-winning Gladiator, puts flesh on the age-old mystique of the knight
errant and brings to vivid life the titanic struggle between Muslims and Christians over the Holy
Land that took place a millennium ago, and echoes into the present.
Working with Scott, screenwriter William Monahan has dramatized a fascinating episode
shortly before the Third Crusade, when Jerusalem and much of the Holy Land were ruled by
European knights, drawn to crusading by religious fervor and the promise of land and riches in
an exotic realm. Their story centers on one of those knights, Balian of Ibelin, who becomes a
hero, standing firm against treachery in the Christian alliance, and leading the people of
Jerusalem in a gallant defense against Saladin’s vast Saracen army.
Kingdom of Heaven stars Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) as Balian, who
undertakes the odyssey of his life for a just cause. Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Gangs of New
York) also stars as Godfrey, Balian’s father, who passes on to him both his barony and his legacy
of knightly honor. The accomplished ensemble cast includes Academy Award winner Jeremy
Irons (Reversal of Fortune) as Tiberias, military advisor to King Baldwin; David Thewlis (Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) as the Hospitaler, Godfrey’s spiritual counselor and military
aide; and Brendan Gleeson (Troy) as the bloodthirsty Reynald of Chatillon.
In Jerusalem, Balian falls in love with the princess Sibylla, King Baldwin’s sister, played
by Eva Green (The Dreamers). She is the reluctant wife of the power-hungry baron Guy de
Lusignan, played by Marton Csokas (The Bourne Supremacy). Syrian film star and director
Ghassan Massoud (Haytham Hakky’s Memories of the Forthcoming Age) also stars as the great
Saracen general Saladin.
The film is executive produced by two-time Academy Award winner Branko Lustig
(Gladiator, Schindler’s List), Lisa Ellzey (In Her Shoes), and Terry Needham, first assistant
director on such Ridley Scott films as Black Hawk Down and Gladiator. The creative team
behind the scenes is led by the director’s acclaimed collaborators, including director of
photography John Mathieson, B.S.C. (Academy Award nominee, Gladiator), production
designer Arthur Max (Academy Award winner, Gladiator), editor Dody Dorn, A.C.E.

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(Matchstick Men), costume designer Janty Yates (Gladiator), and composer Harry Gregson-
Williams (Man on Fire).
Acclaimed for his visual artistry, complex heroes, and immersive attention to detail,
director Ridley Scott has memorably created worlds on the screen, from reinventing science
fiction with Alien to reimagining ancient Rome with Gladiator. Scott had been contemplating the
myth and lore of the knight and all that figure personifies for the better part of two decades.
“I’d always wanted to make a movie about knights and medieval times, the Crusades
especially,” says Scott. The impulse was a natural one, given the kinds of characters that interest
him. Scott’s archetypal hero is an ordinary though gifted man (or woman) caught up in great
events—a character who comes through hardship or tragedy to emerge as a real hero, someone
who takes a stand and refuses to be moved off it. (Think Maximus, the up-from-the-ranks Roman
general turned rebel in Gladiator; Deckard, the blade runner with a conscience; or Alien’s
Ripley.)
“Historically, the knight—like the cowboy or the policeman—represents a person on the
leading edge of his culture at a particular time,” Scott says. “These figures have always given us
great opportunities to tell stories that carry the attributes of a hero. And one of the most
important is that the character carries with him his own degrees of fairness, faithfulness, and
chivalry.”
It was screenwriter Monahan who suggested to Scott a story that focused on the Kingdom
of Jerusalem during the reigns of Baldwin IV and Saladin, and a young knight who emerges as
its defender.
“’The knight stands for an ideal,” Monahan explains, “and the period that most
illuminates that ideal would be the Crusades.”

With the cry “God wills it!” Pope Urban II in 1095 urged Christian Europe into a frenzy
to reclaim the holy city of Jerusalem, conquered by Muslim armies that swept through the
Middle East in the 7th century. Thousands answered the call, from kings to peasants, and
successive waves of Crusaders made their way eastward over the next 200 years, laying siege to
ancient cities, founding kingdoms, and sowing the seeds of religious conflict for centuries to
come.

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 Jerusalem was retaken in the First Crusade (there were eight in all), and several
generations of Christian princes ruled there. But by the year 1186—when our story opens—the
kingdom was rife with dissension, and Saladin’s growing power threatened its very existence,
maintained only by replenishing the garrisons with fresh forces from Europe. A king’s vassal
like Godfrey might return to his homeland to recruit new fighters for the Holy Land. Godfrey, of
course, has another mission.
The story’s focus is the young blacksmith Balian, whose talents go well beyond the crude
forging of iron. “Balian is an artificer, an engineer,” explains Orlando Bloom, whose roles in The
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Troy launched the young actor into
global superstardom. “He has the ability to look at a castle and understand how it would best be
protected, which becomes useful to him later in his journey.”
As the story begins, Balian is in despair, what Bloom calls a “nihilistic state. He has lost
his wife. He has lost his child. You meet a man who is in hell, essentially.”
It is at this moment that a knight appears with his band of brothers. Liam Neeson stars as
Godfrey of Ibelin, who left France to become a Crusader and whose bravery and integrity have
earned him a place close to King Baldwin. “When these Crusaders took over Jerusalem, they
became very powerful men,” says Neeson. “They were given large grants of land. They became
like little kingdoms within themselves. Godfrey is a leader and a soldier, and was given a large
piece of land outside of Jerusalem.”
Godfrey has returned to France to find his son. “He knows he has a son,” says Neeson.
“He has never met the boy because Balian came from an affair Godfrey shouldn’t have had with
Balian’s mother. But Godfrey has come back to find Balian and ask him to come to Jerusalem.”
“He doesn’t offer him land,” adds Bloom. “He doesn’t offer him money. He offers him
family. He offers him the chance to be his son, working for him in the Holy Land.”
Though initially Balian resists Godfrey, circumstances leave him no alternative but to
join his father. “Balian is lost, essentially,” describes Bloom. “His sole purpose in going along is
to find answers to the big questions hanging over his head. He is a young man on a journey of
spiritual, personal, and political growth and discovery, trying to understand what life is about.
He’s seeking forgiveness and understanding. So he catches up with Godfrey and they set off.”
Godfrey travels with other knights, some mercenaries, and the Hospitaler, a knight-
confessor, played by David Thewlis. “The Hospitalers originated in the eleventh century,” notes

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Thewlis. “They were a monastic brotherhood that catered to the needs of Christian pilgrims in
the Holy Land. Although the Hospitaler can be a fighter, he’s essentially a pacifist.”
Godfrey, says Thewlis, is troubled. “He has a very dark sorrow about him, but finds some
redemption at the end of his life by finding Balian. He rediscovers some love within himself,
some warmth, seeing how his heritage can be passed down to Balian for the future.”
In an ambush on the journey, Godfrey is mortally injured in battle. As a final act of
redemption, Godfrey knights his son, passing on to him his mission of keeping the peace in
Jerusalem. “I try to convince him to go to Jerusalem—that there is a way forward for all of us,
Christian and Muslim, to come together and be civilized together,” says Neeson. “Godfrey has
come to this realization only after many, many years of senseless killing.”
The Hospitaler becomes Balian’s companion and counselor after Godfrey’s death. “He
presents certain questions and lets Balian find the answers,” says Scott. “He uses the words ‘right
action’—doing the right thing, no matter what. That’s what he believes God is looking for. And
the rest is folly. You don’t have to hear voices. You don’t have to kneel. It’s about right action.”
In Jerusalem, Balian meets the cast of characters that define the city at the time. His first
significant encounter is with the King’s sister, the beautiful princess Sibylla (Eva Green), who is
mired in an arranged marriage to Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas). “She’s quite exotic,”
describes newcomer Eva Green, who made her feature film debut in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The
Dreamers. “She has lived all her life in Jerusalem, brought up with Christians, Jews, and
Muslims. But she has been living in quite repressive circumstances. Her mother put her into an
arranged marriage against her wishes. She hates her husband; she doesn’t respect his values or
his pursuit of power. Sibylla and Balian are helplessly drawn to one another, despite political
complications. “Balian is not looking for love,” says Bloom, “but he falls very deeply in love,
because Sibylla is this incredibly intoxicating, otherworldly creature to him. It’s a very emotional
relationship, something he’s yearning for and yet is reluctant to fall into. Meeting this woman
ignites a flame of hope for him.”
Green believes that Sibylla finds some sanctuary in her relationship with Balian, and he
with her. “At the beginning Balian is in a period of mourning,” she says. “He’s confused about
his life, about his faith. And Sibylla is the other extreme. She wants somebody virtuous in her
life. She wants harmony. When they meet, there is a strong attraction. He is so pure, so faithful,
noble. He’s the ideal man for her.”

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 Sibylla is also very fearful for her brother, Baldwin. “She can’t face the truth that he is
going to die,” says Green. “He’s the only person she can really trust.”
King Baldwin IV, like his namesake in history, is a good and just king doomed to die
young from leprosy; the disease has advanced so far that he must hide his face behind a silver
mask. “Baldwin was incredibly strong and stalwart, but he has been debilitated by this leprosy,
and his death is imminent,” says Scott.
When they meet, Baldwin makes it clear to Balian that, as the new Lord of Ibelin, he is to
continue his father’s mission of defending the road to Jerusalem so that it remains open to
pilgrims of all faiths. “All are welcome,” says Bloom, “not because it is expedient, but because it
is right. ”
Balian also meets Tiberias, the King’s wise and tough military advisor, played by Jeremy
Irons. “He is the marshal of the Jerusalem army,” explains Irons. “His boss, King Baldwin, is a
leper. It’s a fairly advanced condition, and as a result he’s not able to command the kingdom as
he would wish, so he relies a great deal on Tiberias.”
Tiberias makes known to Balian the tenuous peace under which Jerusalem exists, beset
by conspiracies within and Saladin’s 200,000 troops surrounding the kingdom. Tiberias has as
much respect for Muslims as he does for Christians, notes Irons, and he often finds it necessary
to remind citizens of the respect they must accord each other. “He is really a man at the end of
his career who is tired of fighting and of the stupid behavior that surrounds him in Jerusalem.”
The truce between Baldwin and Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) is constantly under threat by
conspiracies within the kingdom. “There is an array of complex itineraries in Jerusalem, a lot of
them self-serving,” says Scott. Confusion, cross-politics, and corruption thrive, “all being
delicately balanced by King Baldwin and Tiberias,” he adds. “Everyone else is pushing and
shoving after their own agendas.”
The charismatic leader of the Saracens, Saladin is played by Syrian actor and filmmaker
Ghassan Massoud, who has himself directed The Diplomats, a satirical play that touches on
problems of leadership in the Arab world. Massoud sees Saladin as first and foremost a
statesman. “And second, he is a man of war,” says the actor. “Saladin is the winner of many
battles. At the same time, he makes dialog with the enemy. It’s a very important point for the
leader at this time. He is a very charismatic character, yet very human. And very sweet from the
inside. He believes in dialog with his enemy. ”

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 “Saladin is revered as a great Muslim leader, as a politician, a gentleman, and a great
strategist,” adds Scott. “And it wasn’t just the Saracens that adored him. He was very respected
by the other side. ” Adds Massoud, “Balian and Saladin come to respect each other in the story.”
Guy de Lusignan, Sibylla’s husband, is a member of the Knights Templar, a
military/religious order. “The Templars are an extreme faction that do not want any relationship
with the Muslims,” explains Scott. “They don’t want peace.”
“Guy is a military commander in the army of Jerusalem,” says the actor who portrays
him, Marton Csokas. “The King is inept as far as Guy is concerned, because Guy is a military
person. He wants to get out there and fight, if not for the sport of it, certainly for the power his
achievements might win him. He’s a glory hunter. His desire for power is enormous. He is in
many ways the opposite of Balian.”
Guy is also in love with Sibylla, though she detests him. “He’s at a loss there, both
politically—because they’re not a unified force—and in his personal life, because he lacks what
most of us need, which is love and domestic arrangements,” says Csokas.
Guy’s co-conspirator in extremism is Reynald de Chatillon, who has a massive fortress at
Kerak. (Its ruins still stand today, in present-day Jordan some 50 miles southeast of Jerusalem.)
“Reynald revels in mayhem,” says Brendan Gleeson. “He is malicious and savage, but at the
same time has this daft notion of chivalry. In a way, he is everything that was wrong with the
Crusades. These were the people that made the Crusades a mad, imperialist, xenophobic kind of
hedonism. Everything Reynald does is driven by avariciousness and lust.”
With their impetuousness and urge for chaos and domination, Guy and Reynald set off a
chain reaction that will inevitably lead Jerusalem into war with the Saracens. As the end of
Baldwin’s reign nears, Reynald is only too happy to fall in with Guy’s scheme for taking power.
The tipping point comes when Guy murders a Saracen messenger in cold blood. “That’s pretty
much the end, not just for Guy but for everything Baldwin and Saladin have been trying to
maintain, which is a pluralism and a society of tolerance,” says Csokas. “He gets what he
wanted, along with the consequences.”
Guy’s final act of folly is to lead the Army of Jerusalem out of the city to confront
Saladin’s vastly superior force at the Battle of Hattin, where the Christian knights are
annihilated. We don’t see that battle, because the climax of the film’s story occurs afterward,
when Saladin brings his army to the walls of Jerusalem. Faithful to his knight’s code, Balian

7
takes it upon himself to defend the city, and with his skills as a leader and engineer, turns the city
into a fortress. Ultimately it’s a fight he cannot win, with only a small number of fighters to stave
off an army 200,000 strong. But he triumphs in uniting the defenders and in negotiating their
survival. “Before that,” says screenwriter William Monahan, “the defenders within Jerusalem
are in a state of disunity. And they’re confronting an intensely unified enemy.”
“Baldwin and Saladin would keep the peace if it were up to them,” says Orlando Bloom.
“If it weren’t for the fanatics like Reynald and Guy de Lusignan, who are bloodthirsty and
power-hungry, Jerusalem could have been a place where people come to worship, a place of
peace, of mutual respect for other beliefs and practices, whatever they may be.”
Balian is a man who takes the title of knight with a gravity that others do not, Monahan
points out. “You’re defined by your actions—not what you say, not what you claim to be, but
what you do,” he says. “The movie is built from the code of knighthood. As Ridley has said, the
film is about using your head and your heart.”
“The kingdom of heaven is not what you might expect,” adds Bloom. “It’s not in some
afterlife. It’s a place where you can be who you were born to be, where you can be true to
yourself. It’s a kingdom of conscience. It’s a kingdom of hope and of unity. It’s an ideal of a
world we all should strive for, a world of peace.”

FROM CONCEPTION TO PRODUCTION

Ridley Scott had been developing a project called Tripoli with screenwriter William
Monahan when they began to discuss making a film about some aspect of the Crusades. “It’s a
very rich time in history,” says Scott. “If you examine those 200 years historically, you see every
possible shade of human behavior. You can go in and almost surgically choose the moment you
want to explore.”
. The sensitivity and perceptiveness of Monahan’s script, in the hands of an admired
filmmaker like Ridley Scott, attracted much of the talent that would populate and create the film.
“It is an era which has a lot of parallels in today’s world: how the Christians deal with the
Muslims, how the Muslims deal with the Christians, how they use each other, what their real
agendas are,” comments Jeremy Irons. “This story has reverberations for today.”
Scott stresses that he was creating a film story based on history, not a documentary.
Kingdom of Heaven uses historical events as a canvas on which to paint a rich human drama.

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“We’ve chosen a point in history in which we see a state of peace, which we don’t seem to be
able to attain today,” he notes. “That’s what’s fascinating about it. We try to show both sides in a
balanced light. The hero, Balian, is a man concerned most with ‘right action’ and what that
means. And one of the strongest characters in the film is Saladin, who is played by a Muslim.”
Monahan had long been fascinated by the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, especially the
reign of Baldwin IV. “It was a period of equilibrium between the Crusader state and the
Muslims,” he notes. “There is a balance of power. It is partly a practical truce, but there is also a
kind of fascination between the cultures.” The mutual respect for peace is maintained by King
Baldwin IV and Saladin, who are both at odds with extremists in their respective camps.
Monahan worked from primary sources, using firsthand accounts (in translation) by
people who were present while history was being made, and avoiding interpretations written over
the subsequent centuries. His research revealed that King Baldwin and Saladin did indeed
achieve an unprecedented truce between their societies, during which all three of the great
monotheistic religions were practiced freely in Jerusalem.
“King Baldwin really followed the Muslims’ lead, when they had controlled the city, in
allowing those of other faiths to practice their religion,” Scott points out. “Anyone could come
and go as they pleased, and worship as they pleased.”
At the time the film opens, the truce is working. “Trade is going back and forth,”
comments Monahan. “People are coexisting. The Latin Kingdom has stood for almost a hundred
years at this point. And it’s only a mistake—greed, ambition, fanaticism—that begins to shake
it.”

CASTING THE KINGDOM

“I got to live every boy’s dream,” says Orlando Bloom. “A knight, quite simply, gets the
girl, gets to be everything he is meant to be. Balian is a reluctant hero on a quest, which is the
best kind of hero, for my money.”
Ridley Scott and Bloom had previously worked together on the director’s film Black
Hawk Down. “Orlando is a very honest, outgoing person,” says Scott. “That’s who he is. He’s
also very good physically in the field. He fell out of a helicopter for me in Black Hawk Down. He
can do all the things that I required him to do, but I think his honesty and earnestness give him a
distinct level of authenticity in the role of Balian.”

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 “I felt so privileged to be surrounded by this cast and to work so closely with Ridley,”
says Bloom. “To see how he works and create something with him. He has this uncanny ability
to take history and merge it with contemporary society’s idea of what they want in a movie; he
juxtaposes politics with truth, and if you come from truth you really get to the crux of the matter.
His films are a feast for the eyes, but they also leave you questioning and wondering, with a
sense of purpose. It’s truly extraordinary and I feel incredibly lucky.”
Eva Green was chosen to portray Sibylla because the film needed an especially strong
female presence to stand out in this almost exclusively male world. “Eva is in her early twenties,
but she carries an old soul, which I guess is maturity,” comments Scott. “She has great
judgments and fantastic intuition.”
“Ridley is such a humble person,” observes Green. “As massive in scope as this film is,
he makes it very easy and very simple to work with him. He also understands how vulnerable an
actor can be and creates an atmosphere of security around you. His calm and energy make you
stronger. He never shows a moment of anxiety or tension.”
Many in the stellar cast accepted character roles on the basis of Monahan’s script and the
chance to work with Scott. Jeremy Irons, who appeared in a commercial directed by Scott two
decades ago, actively sought out the director after reading the script. “It was everything you want
a big action movie script to be,” he says. “I wanted to be a part of that. If you’re going make a
big movie, with heart and with enormous potential for huge things happening, the director you
want to work with is Ridley. I think he is making a film unlike anything he’s done before.”
“Because of the extreme power and scope of Ridley’s visual talent, people lose sight of
the fact that he’s a great actor’s director,” says screenwriter Monahan. “You see this from the
earliest days with Alien, which is a masterpiece of ensemble playing.”
Scott insisted that all the Muslim roles be played by Muslim actors. Ghassan Massoud
and Khaled Nabawy, who portray Saladin and the fanatical Mullah, are major stars in the Arab
world. “It is a very special experience for me to work with Ridley on this film,” comments
Massoud. “It must be a very special experience for any actor from the East to play with a director
like Ridley Scott. We respect how he thinks about this film, about the characters and the story.”
To play Guy de Lusignan, who comes closest to being the villain of the piece, Scott
sought an actor who could credibly portray ruthlessness fueled by a wayward love. Guy’s
shocking acts of violence are always tempered with a vulnerability that inspires some empathy.

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New Zealand-born Marton Csokas feels that what makes this epic so powerful is its intimate
view of the characters. “You have to begin with the interpersonal stories,” says Csokas.
“Otherwise it would just be a big show-and-tell of much bluster. Ridley knows it’s far more
interesting to examine the lives that go on in that world.”
All the actors undertook their own research about the era, about the characters they’re
playing, the customs and culture. Massoud had studied Saladin’s life extensively through Eastern
and Western sources, reading thousands of pages on the subject. “A lot of people will watch this
film because Saladin is history,” says Massoud. “He is a very rich memory for Islamic culture
and the Arab world, but also in the West, in England, France, and America. When people see this
film, they will wonder, who is this man?”
Massoud feels that the character was painted by the screenwriter and director with great
balance. In some cases, they and Massoud discussed making adjustments to the story based on
what he knew of Saladin and Muslim customs. “In my discussions with the director I learned that
the English have a great deal of respect for Saladin as a noble foe to Richard the Lionheart,” he
says.
Liam Neeson was always in Scott’s mind to play Godfrey of Ibelin, the hero’s father. The
role he took on in the film carried over naturally into the cast interactions as they made their way
across locations in Spain and Morocco. “When you have this many actors, they form a
community very quickly,” Scott notes. “Liam was always a kind of leader to that little group.
Even though he’s not that different in age from a lot of the cast, he was very much a father figure
to many of them.”
To convincingly recreate the medieval world, Scott populated it with a vast array of
extras. In one scene alone, at King Baldwin’s palace, the extras included beggars, Hospitaler
knights, Army of Jerusalem knights, guards, palace nobles, priests, monks, the Muslim
Grandee’s bodyguards, musicians, mullahs, Saracen clerics and soldiers, servants, and grooms.

BRINGING THE PAST TO LIFE

The massive production effort that brought Kingdom of Heaven to the screen involved
months of meticulous research, painstaking design work, and tight coordination of crews in
several countries. But it all grew out of sketches on scraps of paper.

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 A supremely visual filmmaker, Scott storyboards in his head as he reads the script.
“When you’re working with Ridley, when you’re talking about a script or story, he draws almost
continually,” comments Monahan. “He’ll draw a frame, draw what he intends to see inside it. If
you’re paying attention when you see the little bits of paper on the table, you can piece together
what it’s going to look like. But nothing can really prepare you for something of this scale. Its
magnitude was enormous. It was like some sort of a military operation.”
“Ridley’s canvasses seem to be getting bigger and bigger,” comments production
designer Arthur Max. “But it seems like the stories are getting more intimate. A seemingly
ordinary person is suddenly swept up into a huge historical tableau where he is surrounded by
historical characters that we all know, but it’s seen and told through the eyes of someone who
has been living a very normal life.”
Scott called on an experienced cadre of creative heads, including Max, to help him create
fully realized medieval worlds on a short schedule. “There’s an automatic ethic of research,”
says the director. “Everyone leaps in and is very well prepared.”
After location scouting and assembling a massive library of references, Max created
models of the main set pieces that he could look at with Scott to decide the final shape of what
they were to create. Then the drawing phase began, with over 1,000 drawings being created by
the art department in Rome.
“It’s a game we all like to play, to create worlds out of not only the research, but out of
the imagination,” Max continues. “It’s not just the façade of a building. We try to make this a
kind of labyrinth—a piece of old Jerusalem, or a piece of the fortress of Kerak, or a piece of the
village at Ibelin. Whether it’s a palace or a simple village environment, we try to give them a
kind of common reality, so that you’re carried away with the telling of the story and the context
in which the story takes place.
“Also, I think the actors feel the period more if they can meander through a total
environment, where you have real life taking place on lots of different levels, not just a big,
impressive wall, devoid of any texture or smell. The set is a living place. We try to give the
streets of Jerusalem a variety of life as it would have gone on at the time of our story.”

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WARDROBE AND WEAPONS
Costume designer Janty Yates also did extensive research on the period to create the
costumes for the diverse company of players in Kingdom of Heaven, some of which represented
a blending of West and East. As she notes, “You need to know everything about every single
tiny Saracen bootstrap. And we had to make five thousand of them.”
Yates began her journey at the British Museum, at other museums and libraries in the
UK, at Leeds Armory, and at the Salle de Crusades in Versailles, where she found a priceless
touchstone for her work on the film. “Just as we were leaving, having fought to get in there, I
noticed there were family crests all around the room, framing the pictures,” she recalls. “I
begged for more time, ran around, and found Balian of Ibelin’s 1180 crest, which we didn’t
know even existed. We thought we were going to have to invent it. That’s what research is all
about.”
For Yates, who previously worked with Scott on Gladiator, the joy of a production is
working with the actors to create character through costume. One of the most important aspects
of costuming this cast was color, particularly of the garments identifying different military
allegiances. “All our knights are in different tabards according to their heritage,” she explains.
“When I found the crest of Ibelin, we noticed that it was burgundy and gold, and we translated
that into burgundy and sand for the Ibelin livery. The Army of Jerusalem is entirely in
cornflower blue, so the king also wears cornflower blue, with gold. Jeremy Irons, who is marshal
of Jerusalem, is in cornflower blue. So is Marton Csokas, who plays Guy De Lusignan. The blue
is a very strong color. For the Saracen army, we went with a palette of reds and sand and ambers
and golds to denote the desert environment. For Saladin, though, we stayed with silver and gold
and black.”
As Eva Green is the only woman in a leading role, Yates took special care with her
costumes. “I had great fun creating her 28 outfits,” she recalls. “Her riding outfits are something
to behold. I had a lot of silks embroidered in India, so her cloaks flow. She wears harem pants
and boots I had made for her in Rome. And her dinner outfits are stunning. She’s drenched in
pearls. Everything’s jeweled and embroidered by hand in India. I had turbans made for her,
embroidered with jewels and pearls and veils.”
Yates and her team created approximately 15,000 costumes worn by actors and extras in
the intense conditions of the Moroccan desert. “Our biggest extra day would be about two

13
thousand,” as she describes it. “First you’ll get one group fitted, then you have to have extra
costumes to fit the next bunch, and the next bunch. And the stunt people all have seven costumes
each.”
Fabrics were brought in from India, Italy, Thailand, France, and the UK. Each costume
had thirteen to fifteen components: jacket, shirts, pants, tabards, multiple pieces of chainmail,
helmets, boots, gloves, cloaks, scabbards, and sword belts. The chainmail was made by WETA
Workshop of New Zealand, which had perfected the craft for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. “It’s
so light it could float away, and it looks so realistic,” Yates declares. “All our helmets are made
of rubber, so they’re very light. Everything has been made for the utmost comfort of our actors,
and our extras as well.”
Yates, along with her team of 40 to 80 costumers based in Spain and Morocco, ran her
operation much like a military campaign. As the production moved from location to location, she
created “costume villages” to wash, break down, distress, make, and fit the various costumes.
Weapons master Simon Atherton was charged with creating tens of thousands of
weapons, but two swords were of special significance: Godfrey’s sword, which is inherited by
his son, Balian; and Saladin’s sword. “The hardest thing to make on Godfrey’s sword was the
scabbard and the belt,” says Atherton. “I created the handle in walnut and covered it with animal
skin. It has little dragons as well as a cross. The blades were made in aluminum, which is lighter
and safer than other metals. It took me a solid week to make the first one, and there are five in
all, different weights and sizes.”
For Saladin, Scott wanted big curved scimitars, but Atherton’s research showed that
Saracen blades were straight during this period. After some negotiating back and forth, Saladin’s
final sword was straight in shape. “We split the end because I thought it looked menacing,” he
describes. “The handle is bone and has snakes’ heads on it. This took a lot longer to build; each
item was sent away to be cast.”

SEEKING HISTORY IN SPAIN AND MOROCCO

Two Mediterranean nations served as the locations for Kingdom of Heaven. For 12th-
century France, Scott and his production designer Arthur Max chose Spain, and standing in for
the Holy Land is the kingdom of Morocco. Some of the Jerusalem interiors were also shot in
Spain.

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 Both countries are familiar to Scott, who shot much of 1492 in Spain and used Morocco
for parts of Gladiator and all of Black Hawk Down. That experience aided the choice of many
locations that contribute to the film’s visual tapestry.
Scott and his filmmaking team formed a crew of 436 to begin production in Spain.
Another 443 Moroccans joined the production in Morocco. At its height, the production utilized
25,000 to 30,000 extras, sometimes augmented by the Moroccan army. “They have discipline
and are great riders,” comments Scott. “Without the help of the Palace of His Majesty,
Mohammed VI, we could never have made this movie.”
Shooting began in northern Spain. Spain itself is an amalgam of faiths, and its greatest
monuments are mosques and churches. Loarre Castle, which was used for Godfrey’s family
castle, is one of Europe’s best-preserved 12th-century fortresses. Standing in the shadow of the
Pyrenees, it was built on the border between Christian Spain and Muslim Spain at a time when
Arab forces were retreating. Scott cloaked the impregnable castle in the winter gloom of snow
flurries and scudding clouds. Balian first appears in the village at the foot of the castle, before he
begins his pilgrimage of redemption.
Next the unit moved to Segovia, a jewel in the crown of Spain’s great medieval towns, to
shoot an ambush sequence. Valsain Forest is normally an idyllic wood in which wild boar and
antlered deer reign. Forty years earlier, the forest was the site of the World War II film The
Battle of the Bulge.
Production then moved to the great walled city of Avila, where Scott used the
magnificent 12th-century Romanesque cathedral for one scene of coronation panoply and
another of Christian defeat.
Six hours to the south, near Cordoba, is the small town of Palma del Rio, famous as the
birthplace of legendary matador El Cordobes. In the city’s center sits Pontocarrero Palace, built
by Sultan Abu Yacub in the 12th century. In 1989 a new owner initiated renovations that
continue today. The palace appears in Kingdom of Heaven in a variety of guises, from a
courtyard in Ibelin, Balian’s inherited barony, to a hospital where a hero dies.
Next came Seville, the capital of Spain’s Muslim past. Scott’s choice of Andalusian
backgrounds was his way to salute Arabic art, in the place where it reached its apogee. Two
important sites were used to visually enrich Scott’s recreation of the 12th century: the Casa de
Pilatos (Pilate’s House) and the Alcazar. Both are places surrounded by legend. Pilate’s House,

15
reputedly a recreation of the infamous Roman praetor’s residence in Jerusalem, reflects the
Christian adaptation of Muslim art following the reconquest of Spain. Long neglected and now
fully restored to glory, the sprawling complex contains gardens and patios of surpassing beauty.
The Alcazar has been a royal residence for a millennium. Actually a collection of palaces,
it houses one of the world’s most impressive examples of Arabic art. The furniture and tapestries
rival those of Versailles. Fully one-quarter of the patios that make up the Alcazar were used in
the film, the majority representing King Baldwin IV’s palace in Jerusalem.
If Spain donated interiors, Morocco was home to the picture’s principal exterior location.
Here, landscapes stretch from horizon to horizon, punctuated by mesas and buttes that resemble
the American Southwest. The company resided in Ouarzazate, known as the gateway to the
Sahara and an administrative center of 40,000 people. (The city’s name in Arabic means
“without problems.”)
Timdrissit was an important stopover for the huge camel caravans that once traded
between sub-Saharan Africa and Marrakech. Today a half-dozen giant casbahs—the medieval
equivalents of roadside inns that accommodated both camels and drovers—loom over a seldom-
used oasis. Time and wind have softened their contours so that they resemble sandcastles,
lending them a sense of mystery. In the midst of these impressive formations, Max built the
Holy Land manor that Balian inherits. The set and its surrounding farm are crucial in the tale to
establish the young hero as both a leader and an engineer.
Another key location represented Golgotha. This hill, where Christ is said to have been
crucified, juts from a warren of alleys in Jerusalem. It is here that Balian buries the crucifix of his
late wife in an attempt to put his own torments to rest. The hill and the casbah at its base are
known as Ait Ben Haddou; the site has been registered by UNESCO as belonging to the
patrimony of mankind. Other locations in the film that merit inclusion in this legendary registry
of monuments are Loarre Castle, Avila, Segovia, and Seville’s Casa de Pilotas and the Alcazar.
The final Moroccan location was Essaouira, on the Atlantic coast. Once noted for a dye
derived from local shellfish, known as Tyrian purple and a favorite for Roman togas, the town
later became a major trading port linked to Marrakech. In 1969 and 1970, Jimi Hendrix
headquartered here and actually tried to buy the town, whereupon it became known as the hippie
capital of Morocco. For the film, its streets and old walls were used to create details of medieval

16
Jerusalem, and a beach down the coast served as the coastal backdrop where Balian fortuitously
is washed up after being shipwrecked.
Earth, wind, and fire are elemental ingredients in this film’s stunning pageantry. Scott
worked with director of photography John Mathieson, B.S.C. to create shots in which the
audience will literally see the air in every exterior scene, whether drenched in smoke, rain, snow,
sand, or mist. Never invisible, it is always a tangible presence. Wherever possible, those
elements are enhanced by light. Wind enlivens flags and banners.

RECREATING JERUSALEM
Ridley Scott, who had worked with production designer Arthur Max on earlier films,
notes that Max was trained as an architect, and thus brings a degree of functionality to the
environments they’re creating. “I find that a very useful thing,” Max says.
Of his recreation of 12th-century Jerusalem on the back lot of Atlas Film Studios, he
says, “Jerusalem is definitely the biggest set I’ve ever worked on, and one of the larger sets
constructed in recent years. Our set is an amalgam of the real Jerusalem combined with
research.”
One challenge in envisioning the sets to be built for production six months hence was
determining the position of the sun in relation to the set at that time of year. “There’s something
like twenty degrees of change both horizontally and vertically in the path of the sun, but we seem
to have gotten it pretty right,” says Max. “We did some digital predictions and computer pre-vis
models for casting shadows and finding out the alignment of our sets.” This was important
because Scott wanted light to strike the walls of Jerusalem at a certain angle in his shots.
To design Jerusalem, “we looked at the real city, the real gates, and the citadel area,
which has the Tower of David, and we modeled our walls on those elements,” says Max. “There
are over 28,000 square meters of wall. We used 6,000 tons of plaster. The plastering skills of our
crew are probably some of the best in the world.”
The filmmakers also had to manufacture most of the objects used in the course of a city’s
daily life. “Those things were just not available, but we were fortunate in Spain and Morocco,”
says Arthur Max. “The ceramic, metal and leatherworking industries are still alive and well
there.”

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 Like so much about recreating this world, the small details were crucial. “With period
films you inevitably end up making most things because it’s very hard to find a 12th-century
bathtub, for example. We had half a dozen in this movie. We made a dozen different forges, not
to mention the flags, the armor, the thousands and thousands of weapons. Arrows, swords and
shields were all scrupulously made by a lot of craftsmen.”
Authenticity colored every facet of the production, from massive sets to the smallest
hand prop. Set Decorator Sonja Klaus, with a staff of 80 craftsmen, went directly to the source in
some cases. A dozen thatch roofers joined the film’s crew of 450. The thatchers, a small band of
craftsmen, work in the same way their ancestors did in the 12th century. A single British
blacksmith was hired to teach Orlando Bloom how to manage a forge in the way it was done a
millennium ago. An 11th-century horseshoe found near the Tower of London was used as a
model. Hired from Madrid were three women who have preserved and still prepare recipes from
the time of the Crusades.
“A lot has been made from scratch by our leather, drapery, paint, and dyeing
departments,” says Klaus. “Our model makers sculpt, spin plaster, fashion molds, do fiberglass
and metal work. Our leather workers can make anything from a leather bucket to a saddle. Our
carpenters make furniture and carts. The metal workers create braziers, torches, brackets, hinges,
and rings. We also have a man who works in bamboo and wicker.” Dressing the cavalry horses
was yet another challenge. “We have over 850 pieces of horse tack,” notes Klaus.
“It’s interesting to turn the clock backward,” comments Max. “Part of the process of
recreating a period is to create an atmosphere with the smallest objects that people don’t think
about—wasp-catching jars that are hung in rooms, for example. Research turns up a lot of
strange items. You have an incredible amount of detail in common objects, in the way that
people cook their meals and make their bread, in the way that water is carried. All these give a
kind of density to the dream and more reality to the storytelling.’ That’s why we do it.”
The nationalities of the various crews were a challenge. In Morocco, there were some 350
construction people, Moroccan, Croatian, Italian, Spanish, and English. “I think the mix was
very healthy,” says Ridley Scott. “As in the Crusades, our crew was a mixture of different
cultures coming together.”

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ENHANCING REALITY
As large as it was built, the extraordinary Jerusalem set has been expanded to life-size by
CGI. “The part of the production design process that I enjoy most is confusing the issue of
what’s existing, what’s real, and what’s been added on, where the edges are, with the computer-
generated part of the sets,” says Max. “Blurring the lines, so you can’t really tell what we’ve
done, what was there before, and what’s been generated in a computer afterwards. The design is
imperceptible. That’s when you know you’ve done your job well, when you can’t see where the
edges are.”
Twenty-five years ago, during the production of Blade Runner, visual effects pioneer
Doug Trumbull gave Scott a piece of advice that informs his work even today. “He said, ‘Can
you do this live?’” recalls Scott. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Do it live. Believe me, it’ll be better
and it’ll be cheaper.’ I always remember that, and I always stick with making it all as real as
possible.”
But Scott is more than willing to use VFX when there’s a good reason to. Notes Visual
Effects Supervisor Wesley Sewell: “Jerusalem is large now, but not the size of a city. Our
challenge was to enhance it into a thriving metropolis capable of housing a million people.”
Describing the siege in which Saladin’s forces seize the city, Sewell explains,
“Technology allows us to create people that not only look real but move with realistic reactions.
In The Lord of the Rings, their technology was quite state-of-the-art, but later techniques take
this film to a higher level of reality. We have more refinement of movement and interaction. We
can now create many attitudes in the same scene.”
The Saracen army, for example, comes from many parts of the Arab world. “We have
mixed it up a bit, people from Syria, Egypt, and North Africa,” Sewell describes. “We
photographed the costumes in a controlled environment to later change the color of a turban or a
tunic.”
Kingdom of Heaven’s climactic battle scenes depict Saracen forces pushing huge siege
towers up to the walls of the city; as wood touches stone, the bridges fall, allowing Muslim
troops access to the ramparts. Ladders topple into place against the walls, and hot oil is poured
over the invading army. As Saracen arrows fill the sky, Christian defenders fight back to close
the breach. Men on fire plummet from the walls.

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 Six cameras captured the action, one of which was in a helicopter hovering above the
scene. The sequence was repeated three times until director Ridley Scott shouted his approval. It
all will take less than a minute of screen time, but it took military-like organization to have
everything in place that morning on the outskirts of Ouarzazate.
Two thousand extras arrived at 5:30 a.m. and donned multiple layers of costumes before
moving on to hair and makeup. Dozens of special effects technicians had built the siege towers
so that they functioned exactly as they would have a millennium earlier. The giant ladders falling
into place were not left to chance, but were motorized and swung up into place like those on a
fire engine. Fires burned throughout the 300-meter-long walls. Cardboard boxes were hidden to
break the falls of some of the 120 international stuntmen on hand. Armourers collaborated with
special effects men to aim and launch batteries of arrows. They had earlier fashioned authentic
“scorpions,” period weapons of mass destruction that combined the technology of a crossbow
with the power of a catapult to launch lethal harpoons.
Visual effects artists measured and photographed the sequence so that the 2,000 soldiers
taking part on this morning would realistically appear as 200,000, and the 330-yard-long walls
would stretch to over a mile in length on screen.
Another important veteran in the Scott camp is Special Effects and Prosthetics Supervisor
Neil Corbould. “One of the biggest challenges for us is just the sheer volume of the effects. We
had siege weapons firing, siege weapons blowing up, a lot of explosions throughout Jerusalem.
They shot with five to eight cameras, and we had to get an effect for each camera. And this was
quite a big fire set. We put in a kilometer of gas pipe and had 36,000 liters of propane at any one
time. We burned 120,000 liters of propane in all.”
Close work between Corbould and Stunt Coordinator Phil Neilson allowed the scene to
proceed without a single broken collarbone, even though “we set 56 people on fire, who are
falling from 45-foot siege towers. I think we broke a new record,” muses Scott. “With both Neil
and Phil it’s about care and attention, with both excitement and safety in mind.”

SCORING AND THE FINAL MIX

Ridley Scott had not worked with composer Harry Gregson-Williams prior to Kingdom of
Heaven. “Harry comes from a rather classical background, which for this film is essential,” he
describes. “But there is a way to mix it up.”

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 The film opens in France, in a desolate, frigid setting. “Not a very emotional place,” says
Gregson-Williams. In these earliest moments of the film, he employs the chilly sound of a
consort of viols. By contrast, once Balian arrives in Jerusalem, “and he’s experiencing smells
and colors and sounds that he hasn’t experienced before, I can hear an oud, a kanoon (or qanun),
or a kamancha, which is an Arabic violin. These colors start coming into the score just as Balian
discovers them.”
In Studio 3 at Abbey Road studios in London, Gregson-Williams augmented his
orchestra with a 123-voice Bach choir as well as a small group of Turkish musicians from
Istanbul. “The color of this score is going to come from the Turkish musicians I brought in,” he
says, “as well as the hurdy-gurdy player, the consort of viols, and the Bach choir, singing very
quietly at times. That’s an extraordinary sound. I feel this power like some ocean liner behind
the orchestra.
“But there are a lot of flavors,” he continues. “I’ve done many percussion sessions,
playing on the drums of the era, exact replicas of the real thing.”
Rather than create a theme for Balian, the composer began with the father, Godfrey of
Ibelin. Then Godfrey’s theme evolves into Balian’s music as he hands over his sword and
responsibility to his son. “Godfrey disappears but we’ve kept him alive,” notes the composer.
“His theme becomes Balian’s theme.”
For Sibylla, Gregson-Williams created music that is delicate and exotic. By contrast,
Reynald is accompanied by a theme that is “prowling around downstairs in cello, bass, tuba, and
trombone.”
Gregson-Williams created a motif for the Saracen leader Saladin based on a double-
stopped flute—a rare instrument that has only a handful of notes, always played in the same
order, “which puts you in mind of his presence and his nobility.”
For the doomed King Baldwin, Gregson-Williams chose sonorous midrange brass, “some
French horns and trombones,” he says. “His theme is the most conventional and regal. There is a
certain sadness to him, but he’s got enormous integrity. His lines are beautifully written.”
When the two cultures clash, Gregson-Williams begins each battle with orchestration,
and it reaches its climax with ferocious sound effects. To mix the sound for the film, Scott
brought in Michael Minkler, who has been nominated for nine Oscars® and won two (for

21
Chicago and Scott’s Black Hawk Down). “I’ve done a couple of films with Mike before,” he
says. “Black Hawk Down was a challenge to mix, and his work was brilliant.”

ABOUT THE CAST

ORLANDO BLOOM (Balian) made his feature film debut starring as Legolas in Peter
Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, a role he continued to play to great
acclaim in the second and third installments of the trilogy: The Lord of the Rings: The Two
Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Bloom previously worked with director Ridley Scott on the award-winning Black Hawk
Down. Recently Bloom starred opposite Johnny Depp in Jerry Bruckheimer’s hugely successful
blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, directed by Gore Verbinski.
He is currently filming its sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Bloom starred as Paris, opposite Brad Pitt, in Wolfgang Petersen’s epic Troy; in Gregor
Jordan’s Ned Kelly, with Heath Ledger; and in The Calcium Kid; and he recently wrapped Frank
E. Flower’s independent film, Haven. He will next be seen in Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown,
opposite Kirsten Dunst.
Born in Canterbury, England, Bloom at age 16 moved to London, where he joined the
National Youth Theatre for two seasons. He then gained a scholarship to train with the British
American Drama Academy. On completing his scholarship, Bloom played the lead in the play A
Walk in the Vienna Woods, and made his screen debut in the feature film Wilde, based on the life
of Oscar Wilde.
Bloom was accepted to Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and chose to
put his film career on hold for the opportunity to further his education. While at Guildhall,
Bloom performed in several productions including Little Me, A Month in the City, Peer Gynt,
Mephisto and Twelfth Night. After graduating from Guildhall, Bloom appeared in the BBC
television series Midsomer Murders.

EVA GREEN (Sibylla) made her feature film debut starring as Isabelle in Bernardo
Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, released by Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Born in Paris, Green spent three years at the Eva St. Paul School before attending a
London workshop at the Webber Douglas acting school. After returning to Paris, she appeared in

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two theater productions: Didier Long’s Jealousie 3 Fax, and Gerard Deshartes’s Turcarcet. In
2003, Green starred in the film Arsene Lupin for director Jean-Paul Salomé.

JEREMY IRONS (Tiberias) works in both theater and film. He began his career on the
English stage at the Bristol Old Vic and then debuted in London in Godspell, as John the Baptist.
His work in the West End and at Stratford-Upon-Avon culminated with his performance of
Richard II for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He made his Broadway debut in Tom
Stoppard’s The Real Thing, opposite Glenn Close, for which he won both the Drama League
Award and Tony Award® for Best Actor.
Irons has played many roles for television, most notably in Love for Lydia and
Christopher Hampton’s Tales from Hollywood. His performance in Brideshead Revisited brought
him worldwide acclaim and nominations for an Emmy® Award, the British Academy, and the
Golden Globe® Award for Best Actor. In 1996 he directed and co-starred with his wife, actress
Sinead Cusack, in Mirad, A Boy from Bosnia, a Channel 4 Television film about refugees written
by Ad de Bont.
On the big screen Irons has starred in such films as Jerzy Skolimowski’s Moonlighting,
Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, Volker Schlondorff’s Swann in Love, and The Mission, with Robert De
Niro. Irons played opposite Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, for which he
received the Variety Club Award for Best Actor and a BAFTA nomination; and opposite his son
Sam in Roald Dahl’s Danny, Champion of the World. His performance in David Cronenberg’s
Dead Ringers brought him a Best Actor Award from the New York Film Critics Circle and a
Canadian Genie. Irons starred again with Glenn Close in the film based on the retrial of Claus
von Bulow, Reversal of Fortune. For this performance Irons received the 1990 Academy Award
and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
Irons went on to work in such films as Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka, David Cronenberg’s
M. Butterfly, and Bille August’s The House of the Spirits, with Streep and Close again. In 1994,
Irons created the voice of Scar for Disney’s The Lion King. He followed that with the action film
Die Hard with a Vengeance, opposite Bruce Willis; and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty,
co-starring Liv Tyler.
Irons’s more recent films include Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box; and The Man in the Iron
Mask, in which he co-starred with Gerard Depardieu, Leonardo DiCaprio, and John Malkovich.

23
He played Humbert Humbert in Adrian Lyne’s controversial adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita; and also co-starred in Longitude, an A&E Granada film that premiered on BBC. Irons
was in production with four films in 2001, including And Now...Ladies and Gentleman, directed
by Claude Lelouch; The Time Machine, based on the H. G. Wells novel; Callas Forever, directed
by Franco Zeffirelli; and Last Call, a Showtime Original Picture directed by Henry Bromell, co-
starring Neve Campbell. Irons also played Colonel Pretis in Nina Mimica’s Mathilde.
In 2003, Irons debuted in the role of Frederik in the New York City Opera production of
Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, directed by Scott Ellis. He also starred opposite
Annette Bening in Being Julia. Irons most recently played Antonio in a Michael Radford film
production of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, co-starring Al Pacino. Irons recently shot
Casanova, a film by Lasse Hallström, in which he plays Cardinal Pucci.

DAVID THEWLIS (Hospitaler), among the most versatile of British actors, first won
critical and public acclaim for his powerful performance in Mike Leigh’s Naked. He recently
starred as Professor Lupin in Alfonso Cuaron’s highly lauded adaptation of Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban.
His other credits include Nick Love’s Goodbye Charlie Bright; Paul McGuigan’s
Gangster No. 1; Peter Hewitt’s Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?; Bernardo Bertolucci’s
Besieged; the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski; David Caffrey’s Divorcing Jack; Jean-Jacques
Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet, and John Frankenheimer’s The Island of Dr Moreau.
Other film credits include Agnieszka Holland’s Total Eclipse; Rob Cohen’s
Dragonheart; Mike Hoffman’s Restoration; Caroline Thompson’s Black Beauty; David Jones’s
The Trial; Paul Greengrass’s Resurrected; Beeban Kidron’s Vroom; as well as the Mike Leigh
films Short and Curlies and Life is Sweet.
Thewlis’s many television credits include Dinotopia, Endgame, Dandelion Dead, the
award-winning Prime Suspect III, Frank Stubbs, Journey to Knock, Filipino Dreamgirls,
Skulduggery, A Bit of a Do, Road, and The Singing Detective, opposite Michael Gambon.
In addition to his film and television work, Thewlis has also starred in Sam Mendes’s The
Sea at the Royal National Theatre; Max Stafford-Clark’s Ice Cream at the Royal Court; Buddy
Holly at the Regal in Greenwich; Ruffian on the Stairs/The Woolley at Farnham and Lady, and
The Clarinet at the Kings Head.

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 Dublin-born actor BRENDAN GLEESON (Reynald de Chatillon) had a desire to act
from early childhood and began his career by appearing in local plays and concerts.
At the age of 18, Gleeson auditioned—with disastrous results—for the famed Abbey
Theatre. Discouraged, he abandoned acting for a career as a high school teacher. After ten years
in the classroom, Gleeson decided to return to his dream and pursue acting full-time.
Following small parts in films such as The Field, Far and Away, Michael Collins, and
The Butcher Boy, Gleeson came to the public’s attention as Hamish, the hulking ally of William
Wallace (Mel Gibson), in Braveheart.
Gleeson co-starred in Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain; Danny Boyle’s 28 Days
Later, and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. His numerous other film credits include Ron
Shelton’s Dark Blue; John Boorman’s The Tailor of Panama; A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,
directed by Steven Spielberg; John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II; and I Went Down, directed by
Paddy Breachnach. On television, Gleeson appeared in The Treaty, The Snapper, and Kidnapped.
In 1998 he starred in The General for John Boorman, winning international acclaim for
his performance as the Irish mafia figure Martin Cahill. This performance earned him Best Actor
awards from the Boston Society of Film Critics, the London Film Critics, and the Irish Film and
Television Association.
Gleeson’s most recent credits include playing Menelaus in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy; as
well as starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller The Village; and his third film with John
Boorman, Country of My Skulls. He will next be seen in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

MARTON CSOKAS (Guy de Lusignan) was born in New Zealand, and attended
Canterbury University in Christchurch. He was accepted into the Te Kura Toi Whakaari/New
Zealand Drama School. With a grounding in Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Brecht, he starred in the
acclaimed 1996 film Broken English, which brought him a New Zealand Film nomination for
Best Actor. For an episode in the popular television series G.P., he was nominated for an
Australian Film Institute Award for Best Performance in a Drama. He was also seen
internationally in the highly praised television movie, The Three Stooges.
Csokas has worked nonstop in recent years. He co-starred in Richard Donner’s Timeline,
based on Michael Crichton’s bestselling novel. In quick succession he co-starred in the hit

25
thriller The Bourne Supremacy; completed the Italian independent film Evilinko, opposite
Malcolm McDowell; starred opposite Sir Ian McKellen and Natasha Richardson in Asylum; and
appeared in John Dahl’s The Great Raid, with Joseph Fiennes. He was last seen opposite Vin
Diesel in Rob Cohen’s action thriller XXX; in Jerry Bruckheimer’s production of Down and
Under; followed by Alex Proyas’s Garage Days; and Rain, a film from New Zealand that
screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the Directors Fortnight. Upcoming is the science fiction
adventure Aeon Flux, starring Charlize Theron.

LIAM NEESON (Godfrey of Ibelin) has twice been nominated for Tony Awards; first for
his Broadway debut in 1993 in the Roundabout Theater’s revival of Eugene O’Neill’s 1921
drama Anna Christie; and second in March of 2002, for his Broadway role as John Proctor in
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, opposite Laura Linney.
For his highly acclaimed performance in Steven Spielberg’s watershed film Schindler’s
List, Neeson earned Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominations. Neeson’s recent
film roles include starring as sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, again opposite Linney, who
portrayed his wife, in the highly acclaimed Oscar nominated Kinsey, directed by Bill Condon.
Recently Neeson has been seen among the ensemble cast of Love Actually. He also starred in
Martin Scorsese’s epic Gangs of New York and appeared with Harrison Ford in the nuclear
submarine film K-19: The Widowmaker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
Neeson starred as the archetypal Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn in George Lucas’s Star Wars:
Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Additional motion picture credits include Gun Shy, opposite
Sandra Bullock; and the role of Jean Valjean in the screen adaptation of the Victor Hugo classic
Les Misérables.
In 1996, Neeson starred as the Irish hero in Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, for which he
received Best Actor honors at the Venice Film Festival, a Golden Globe Award
nomination for Best Actor, and London’s prestigious Evening Standard Award for Best Actor.
The Irish-born actor joined the prestigious Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast in 1976 and
made his professional acting debut in Joseph Plunkett’s The Risen People. After two years with
the Lyric Players he joined the famed repertory company of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.
In 1980, John Boorman spotted him playing Lennie in a stage production of John
Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and cast him in Excalibur, the epic saga of the Arthurian legend.

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Since then Neeson has appeared in more than 30 films, playing a wide range of characters. These
include: Dino De Laurentiis’s epic remake of The Bounty, opposite Mel Gibson and Anthony
Hopkins; the critically acclaimed Lamb, for which he received an Evening Standard Drama
Award nomination for his haunting portrayal of a priest tormented by doubts; Andrei
Konchalovsky’s Duet for One with Julie Andrews; A Prayer for the Dying, opposite Mickey
Rourke and Bob Hoskins; Roland Joffe’s The Mission, opposite Robert De Niro and Jeremy
Irons; the courtroom drama Suspect, with Cher; The Good Mother, with Diane Keaton; Sam
Raimi’s fantasy-thriller Darkman; and David Leland’s boxing drama Crossing the Line.
Subsequent films include Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives, Before and After with Meryl
Streep, and Rob Roy, opposite Jessica Lange.
Neeson’s passion for the classics was again rewarded critically in the PBS American
Playhouse production of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. Neeson’s theater work also includes
portraying Oscar Wilde in David Hare’s critically acclaimed The Judas Kiss, which opened in
London’s West End and subsequently on Broadway in 1998.
Neeson next stars in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, opposite Christian Bale.

Syrian film star GHASSAN MASSOUD (Saladin) has appeared in numerous films in his
native Syria, including Haytham Hakky’s Memories of the Forthcoming Age, and Unshudet al-
Matar (The Chant of Rain), a romance set in rural Syria during the 1940s, directed by Basil al-
Khatib.
He recently wrote and directed a satirical play, Diplomasiyyoun (“The Diplomats”),
which touches on the problems of leadership in the Arab world and played as part of the Syrian
Ministry of Culture’s National Theater’s 2002 season.
In the theater he also appeared in Jawad el-Assadi’s production of August Strindberg’s
Miss Julie.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

SIR RIDLEY SCOTT (Director/Producer) earned his third Academy Award nomination
and second Directors Guild nod as Best Director for his stunning recreation of the Mogadishu
battle in Somalia in Black Hawk Down, one of 2001’s biggest hits. The preceding year he
received his second Academy Award nomination for Gladiator, which won five Oscars out of a

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total 12 nominations, including Best Picture, and earned Scott additional nominations from
BAFTA and the Directors Guild. Gladiator also won Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards for
Best Picture, further solidifying Scott’s reputation as one of the industry’s most innovative,
influential, and versatile stylists.
His most recent release is the acclaimed comedy-drama Matchstick Men, starring Nicolas
Cage.
Born in South Shields, Northumberland, England, Scott grew up in London, Cumbria,
Wales, and Germany before returning to northeast England to live in Stockton-on-Tees. He
excelled in graphic design and painting at West Hartlepool College of Art, strengths that would
later serve as his screen signature, and studied at London’s Royal Academy of Art, where he
completed his first film. Upon graduating with honors, Scott was awarded a traveling scholarship
to the U.S., where he gained valuable experience working with award-winning documentarians
Richard Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker while employed at Time-Life. Returning to the U.K., he
joined the BBC as a production designer and within a year graduated to directing many of the
network’s popular television programs.
Three years later he left to form his own company, RSA, which soon became one of the
most successful commercial production houses in Europe and subsequently added offices in New
York and Los Angeles. Scott directed more than 3,000 commercials, including Chanel’s
captivating “Share the Fantasy” and a memorable Apple Computer spot that aired during the
1984 Super Bowl. His work collected awards at the Venice and Cannes Film Festivals and was
honored by the New York Art Directors’ Club. RSA still maintains a high profile in the global
marketplace, representing some of the most acclaimed directors in film and advertising.
Scott leaped from commercial production to movies in 1978 with The Duellists, a
Napoleonic War saga that brought him the Jury Prize at Cannes. His second film, the
groundbreaking sci-fi thriller Alien, switched gears from the past to the frightening future and
earned an Oscar for Visual Effects. Scott’s next feature, the landmark masterpiece Blade Runner,
starring Harrison Ford, is still considered a milestone of contemporary filmmaking. Nominated
by the Academy for art direction and visual effects, it became a cult classic and the youngest film
to be honored by inclusion in the National Film Archives. In 2003 the director re-edited Blade
Runner for DVD release. Scott also re-cut Alien, which was released in 2004 to celebrate its 25th
anniversary.

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 Scott went on to direct the big-screen fantasy Legend, starring Tom Cruise; the urban
thriller Someone to Watch Over Me, with Tom Berenger; and the cross-cultural gangster epic
Black Rain, with Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia. In 1987 he formed Percy Main Productions
to develop and produce feature films. Its first project, which he helmed, was Thelma and Louise,
starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. The film received five Academy Award nominations,
including Scott’s first as Best Director, won for Best Original Screenplay, and picked up BAFTA
nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. He followed with the historic epic 1492:
Conquest of Paradise and The Browning Version, produced by Scott and starring Albert Finney
and Greta Scacchi.
In 1995, with brother Tony (also a successful filmmaker), he formed Scott Free
Productions, which produced White Squall, G.I. Jane, and the blockbuster sequel Hannibal, all
directed by Scott, as well as Clay Pigeons and Where the Money Is, a caper comedy starring Paul
Newman.
The company produced Showtime’s CableACE-winning anthology series The Hunger,
adapted from Tony Scott’s 1983 film, and the Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning HBO
telefilm RKO 281, starring Liv Schreiber as Orson Welles. For HBO, Scott Free executive
produced The Gathering Storm, an Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning telefilm depicting
the life of Winston Churchill. Scott Free Productions recently signed a two-year development
deal with CBS.
Scott is co-chairman of Mill Film, one of the largest digital production and post-
production houses in London. Founded in 1987, Mill Film helped create visual effects for such
features as Shakespeare in Love, Babe: Pig in the City, Pitch Black, Cats and Dogs, Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and dozens more. Mill Film was recognized
with an Academy Award for their visual effects on Scott’s Gladiator. He is also co-chairman of
Pinewood-Shepperton Holdings, Ltd., a London facility where Alien was filmed and that
provides 42 stages, backlots and locations plus award-winning post-production and support
services. The Scott brothers (as part of a consortium) purchased Shepperton Studios in 1995,
which merged with Pinewood Studios in 2001.
In recognition of his contribution to the arts, Scott was awarded knighthood in January
2003.

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 WILLIAM MONAHAN (Screenwriter) won early notice for his short fiction and literary
essays before publishing the satirical novel Light House in 2000. A year later, he sold the
original screenplay Tripoli to Twentieth Century Fox. This led to a commission from Ridley
Scott to write an original film set during the period of the Crusades, which became Kingdom of
Heaven. Monahan has also written The Departed, his reinvention of the Hong Kong hit Internal
Affairs, to be directed by Martin Scorsese; a Jurassic Park sequel; and the epic war film Mazar-
e-Sharif. Future projects include a drama based on Louis Begley’s novel Wartime Lies; The
Child in Time for Jeremy Irons, and the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian for
Ridley Scott.

BRANKO LUSTIG (Executive Producer) is the winner of two Academy Awards for Best
Picture of the Year, one in 1993 for Schindler’s List and the other in 2000 for Gladiator. His
association with Scott continued with the Academy Award-winning Black Hawk Down. He is the
winner of many prestigious awards, including BAFTA and DGA prizes, an Emmy and a Golden
Globe.
Born in Osijek, Croatia, Lustig survived two years in Nazi concentration camps.
Following the war, he began his career as an assistant director at Jadran Films, Croatia’s largest
film and television studio. He subsequently worked as a production manager on such European
location films as Sophie’s Choice and Fiddler on the Roof.
He went on to serve as assistant director on The Tin Drum and as assistant director,
associate producer, and European production manager for the miniseries The Winds of War and
its sequel War and Remembrance. He was also producer and assistant director on the Emmy-
winning film for television Drug Wars: The Camarena Story and the sci-fi thriller Deadlock. He
was producer of the miniseries The Great Escape: The Final Chapter and The Intruders.

LISA ELLZEY (Executive Producer) is president of Ridley Scott and Tony Scott’s film
and television company, Scott Free Entertainment. As a producer, her recent credits include
Curtis Hanson’s In Her Shoes, with Cameron Diaz; Kevin Reynolds’s Tristan and Isolde, with
James Franco; and the television movie The Gathering Storm, the story of Winston and
Clementine Churchill, starring Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, and Jim Broadbent. Nominated
for nine Emmy awards, the film received three, including Best Made for Television Movie; it

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also earned two Golden Globes and three BAFTA awards. Ellzey is also executive producer of
Tony Scott’s new film, Domino, starring Keira Knightly and Christopher Walken.

TERRY NEEDHAM (Executive Producer) has been a close collaborator with Ridley
Scott for many years. His credits as first assistant director to Scott include Black Hawk Down,
Hannibal, Gladiator, G.I. Jane, and 1492: Conquest of Paradise. Other credits include The
Avengers and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

JOHN MATHIESON, B.S.C. (Director of Photography) has worked with many leading
directors in both commercials and feature films. His first collaboration with Ridley Scott was in
1998 on Gladiator, for which he won the 2001 BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography, an
Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography, and the Cinematography Award at the
Madrid Imagen Film Festival in 2000. His credits since then include Scott’s Hannibal and
Matchstick Men; K-Pax; Marc Evans’s Trauma, and Joel Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera.
In 1996 he was accorded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France’s
Ministry of Culture for his contribution to French cinema.

ARTHUR MAX (Production Designer) has spent most of his career designing for the
world’s top commercial directors. Two of them, Ridley Scott and David Fincher, have worked
extensively with him on film. Fincher asked Max to design Seven when it was still a small,
independent project. When Brad Pitt was signed, things changed, and Max found himself a hot
name in Hollywood. He repeated his assignment with Fincher several years later with The Panic
Room, starring Jodie Foster.
For Scott, Max designed the films G.I. Jane, Gladiator (for which he won a British
Academy Award and an Academy Award nominations), and Black Hawk Down, all of which
garnered him kudos from numerous critics and guild organizations. He prepared Tripoli for Scott
before taking on Kingdom of Heaven.

DODY DORN A.C.E.’s (Editor) credits include Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking

film Memento, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing;
Insomnia, starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams; and Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Waiting For

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Godot. Most recently she edited Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men, starring Nicolas Cage and Sam
Rockwell. She received an Emmy nomination for Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.
Formerly a noted sound editor, she had a long-term collaboration with director Alan
Rudolph.

JANTY YATES’ (Costume Designer) most recent design credit was for Irwin Winkler’s
De-Lovely, a musical portrait of Cole Porter, starring Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd. Kingdom of
Heaven is her third collaboration with Ridley Scott, after working on Hannibal and Gladiator.
Her other notable credits include Charlotte Gray, With or Without You, and Plunkett &
Macleane.

HARRY GREGSON-WILLIAMS has created the scores for a long and extremely varied
list of films, both animated and live-action.
On the live-action side, he most recently composed the scores for Man on Fire, directed
by Tony Scott, and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, starring Renée Zellweger. Gregson-
Williams’ live-action credits also include Veronica Guerin, Phone Booth, Spy Game, Enemy of
the State, The Match, The Borrowers, The Replacement Killers, Deceiver, Smilla’s Sense of
Snow, The Rundown and Return to Sender.
Gregson-Williams recently composed the music for the blockbuster film Shrek 2 and he
won an Annie Award for the score to the original Shrek. His other animated films include Team
America: World Police, Chicken Run, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Antz.
Born in England to a musical family, Gregson-Williams, at age seven, earned a
scholarship from the music school of St. John’s College in Cambridge. By age 13, he had been a
soloist on over a dozen records. He then earned a coveted spot at the Guildhall School of Music
and Drama in London. Gregson-Williams started his film career as an orchestrator and arranger
for composer Stanley Myers, and he went on to compose his first scores for the veteran English
director, Nicolas Roeg.
Gregson-Williams’ introduction to Hollywood film scoring was facilitated by his
collaboration and friendship with Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. Gregson-Williams
provided additional music for the Zimmer-scored films The Rock, Broken Arrow, The Fan,
Muppet Treasure Island, Armageddon, As Good as it Gets and The Prince of Egypt.

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 Upcoming projects for Gregson-Williams include Tony Scott’s Domino and Andrew
Adamson’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.

NEIL CORBOULD (Special Effects and Prosthetics Supervisor) has had a 26-year career
in special effects, half that time as supervisor. His awards reflect his reputation. He won an
Academy Award for Gladiator; two British Academy Awards for Saving Private Ryan and The
Fifth Element; British Academy Award nominations for Gladiator and Vertical Limit; and
Golden Satellite Award nominations for Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator.
His recent films include King Arthur, The Day After Tomorrow, Timeline, Black Hawk
Down, and Four Feathers.

WESLEY SEWELL (Visual Effects Supervisor) was most recently Visual Effects Editor
on Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Gladiator. He was Associate
Visual Effects Editor on Black Hawk Down and Hannibal.

©2005 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved. Property of Fox.

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