Children of Men - Cast

Cast

• Clive Owen as Theo Faron, a former activist who was devastated when his child died during a flu pandemic. Theo is the "archetypal everyman" who reluctantly becomes a saviour. Cast in April 2005, Owen spent several weeks collaborating with Cuarón and Sexton about his role. Impressed by Owen's creative insights, Cuarón and Sexton brought him on board as a writer. "Clive was a big help," Cuarón told Variety. "I would send a group of scenes to him, and then I would hear his feedback and instincts."
• Julianne Moore as Julian Taylor. For Julian, Cuarón wanted an actor who had the "credibility of leadership, intelligence, independence". Moore was cast in June 2005, initially to play the first woman to become pregnant in 20 years. "She is just so much fun to work with," Cuarón told Cinematical. "She is just pulling the rug out from under your feet all the time. You don't know where to stand, because she is going to make fun of you."
• Michael Caine as Jasper Palmer, Theo's dealer. Caine based Jasper on his experiences with friend John Lennon – the first time he had portrayed a character who would pass wind or smoke cannabis. Cuarón explains, "Once he had the clothes and so on and stepped in front of the mirror to look at himself, his body language started changing. Michael loved it. He believed he was this guy". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune notices an apparent homage to Schwartz (Mort Mills) in Orson Welles' film noir, Touch of Evil (1958). Jasper calls Theo "amigo"—just as Schwartz referred to Ramon Miguel Vargas (Charlton Heston). Jasper's cartoons, seen in his house, were provided by Steve Bell.
• Claire-Hope Ashitey as Kee, a character who did not appear in the book. The role of an African illegal immigrant was written into the film, based on Cuarón's interest in the recent single-origin hypothesis of human origins and the status of dispossessed people: "The fact that this child will be the child of an African woman has to do with the fact that humanity started in Africa. We're putting the future of humanity in the hands of the dispossessed and creating a new humanity to spring out of that."
• Chiwetel Ejiofor as Luke
• Pam Ferris as Miriam
• Peter Mullan as Syd
• Charlie Hunnam as Patric
• Danny Huston as Nigel, Theo's cousin and a high ranking government official. Nigel runs a Ministry of Arts programme "Ark of the Arts", which "rescues" works of art such as Michelangelo's David, Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Banksy's British Cops Kissing.
• Oana Pellea as Marichka
• Paul Sharma as Ian
• Jacek Koman as Tomasz
• Miriam Karlin as the elderly German grandmother singing whilst caged. This was Karlin's final film role; she died in 2011.