Tony Gilroy had developed the characters in his script from Dolores' uniquely colloquial descriptions of events unfolding throughout her confession in the book. Once the leads were in place, casting director Nancy Klopper worked with Taylor Hackford in lining up the supporting players.
For the role of Detective John Mackey, Dolores' relentless antagonist, the great Canadian-born actor Christopher Plummer joined the company direct from his Tony Award-nominated role in the Broadway revival of Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land." As Vera Donovan, British actress Judy Parfitt, acclaimed for her performance in the epic PBS production of "The Jewel in the Crown," was enticed to make her first film in America. John C. Reilly, fresh from "The River Wild" and an alumnus of Chicago's prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre, won the part of Constable Frank Stamshaw, the young man who constitutes the entire police force of Little Tall Island. The controversial actor-playwright Eric Bogosian ("Talk Radio," "Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll") was a natural for the role of a slick, abrasive New York editor.
The character of Joe St. George is so thoroughly reprehensible that David Strathairn (Tom Cruise's inmate brother in "The Firm," Meryl Streep's husband in "The River Wild" and a veteran of six John Sayles films since his screen debut in "Return of the Secaucus Seven") initially resisted assuming this persona. "Try as I could to bring in gradations that would humanize him, it didn't seem appropriate," reflects the actor. "He's a brushstroke in a much larger painting. He had to be an effect, a kind of operatic, larger-than-life image in the lives of both the mother and the daughter."
Young Selena was another fortuitous bit of casting. In the course of interviewing hundreds of young actresses, Hackford and company met thirteen year old Ellen Muth at an audition in New York, and they arranged for her to fly to Los Angeles for a screen-test, Hackford directed with Kathy Bates.
Although they have no actual scenes together, Ellen spent time with Jennifer Jason Leigh, who found her a natural mimic; soon, the young Selena was also emulating the elder actress' mania for research by conducting field interviews and maintaining journals on the point-of-view of her character. Director Hackford arranged for rehearsals to start the first week in April on location in Nova Scotia. Principal photography began three weeks later, Monday, April 25, with a scene in which Dolores matter-of-factly denies she killed Vera as Selena drives back home for the first time since she escaped to New York City.
In Gilroy's script, the St. George house is a model of neglect, as Dolores had been living at Vera's as housekeeper and nurse for almost twenty years. Hackford and Rubeo could not find a real house situated in a totally desolate location to match the description in the screenplay, so they decided to build it. Hampered by Nova Scotia's coldest winter in 99 years, they searched the Northwestern shore of the province along the Bay of Fundy and the "lighthouse route" along the southern coast for the proper site. Finally, while scouting outside of Lunenburg in January, tramping through six-foot snowdrifts in temperatures of 28 degrees below zero, they found the perfect place: Blue Rocks, a remote cove dotted with a few ramshackle houses and rickety old fishing shacks. They selected the exact spot where Rubeo's team would build the set.
