Johnny's injuries. Louise drives Jeremy from the house by feigning interest in him, then pulling a knife on him. He departs, leaving behind several hundred pounds. Feeling desolate and rejected, Sophie flees the house with her few possessions. Louise and Johnny seemingly reconcile and discuss returning to Manchester together, but once she leaves for work, Johnny steals the money and hobbles out into the streets. Cast David Thewlis as Johnny Fletcher Lesley Sharp as Louise Clancy Katrin Cartlidge as Sophie Greg Cruttwell as Jeremy G. Smart / Sebastian Hawk Claire Skinner as Sandra the Nurse Peter Wight as Brian, the security guard Ewen Bremner as Archie the Scotsman with a tic Susan Vidler as Maggie Gina McKee as The Cafe Girl Elizabeth Berrington as Giselle Darren Tunstall as Poster Man Production Background and development Leigh first had the idea for the story while a student in Manchester in the early 1960s: "We had a very enlightened teacher who endlessly reminded us that the next total eclipse would be in August 1999. Later I started thinking about the millennium and the end of the world. In 1992 the millennium was impending, so I brought that idea to the film." In 1965, Leigh teamed up with David Halliwell, hired the Unity Theatre for a fortnight, and directed the first production of Halliwell's Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs. According to theater critic Michael Coveney, "Malcolm Scrawdyke is clearly a precursor of Johnny in Naked. Scrawdyke was a loutish art student and absurd ideologue from Huddersfield who had trouble with girls and a hatred for his teachers...the play shared a deeply felt schoolboy coarseness with Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, a piece originally written as a vicious attack on a loathed mathematics master." Leigh's method, as in all his character dramas, consisted of elaborate improvisational rehearsals with the cast to develop the characters' background stories and traits. The actors interacted with the outside world and each other while in character until Leigh told them to come out of character and be themselves. The dialogue produced from these interactions was then edited, or "distilled", to form the script, based on a minimal plot outline by Leigh. The cast was not allowed to discuss their characters with one another outside of rehearsals, as Leigh, for realism, would rather they meet and interact as they would in real life. Thewlis's background reading for the part