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TO CAST A PRIEST
 Agnieszka Holland has long been fascinated by men who make the "radical choice" to become priests. Certainly, in this day and age, it is an unusual path in life, fraught with difficulties and temptations beyond anything in history. Holland points out: "In the past, in Europe, peasant boys became priests because it was their only choice for a career or because it was so respected in the community. Today, a young man has to make the hard decision to give his life to the Church against many other options. He has to be very intelligent because his education is often rigorous and yet he must give up whole portions of himself – he must cut out family and sexuality. He is someone who decides that the search for something bigger is more important. It is an incredible dilemma, and one that I wanted to portray honestly and humanly."
Yet to do so, Holland had to cast a man who could convey all the contradictions of a modern, sexually vibrant man who has subjugated his earthly desires to his faith. She felt that there was only actor on earth who could do so: Academy Award nominee Ed Harris.
Ironically, Holland previously worked with Harris on her film To Kill A Priest, in which he portrayed the secret police officer who hunts down a man of the cloth. "In that film, he was this man who was evil but was extremely attracted to good, and here he has a chance to do the opposite, portray a very good man, who has to face his darker side," she notes.
Holland explains her extreme devotion to working with Harris: "Working with Ed is always a fantastic experience. He is a very deep, very tortured soul, very honest and also very physically beautiful. He was the only actor I knew who could give this character the complexity and the charisma he needed. He can be very serious, yet also very boyish and charming. I basically decided when I sent him the script that if he wouldn't do it, I wouldn't do the movie. He was the key to the movie's very existence."
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