THE CAST AND CHARACTERS
The casting process took Boyle and Colson all over the US, Canada, the UK and India in search of the right actors that could deliver a convincing performance in English and also fit across the three ages of the story - 7, 13, and 18.
It also brought them to an Indian casting director, Loveleen Tandan. "Her role constantly expanded, not only finding the kids but translating and directing them with me,' says Boyle, ' guiding me through the finer cultural complexities of life on the street, and eventually directing the 2^nd unit as it followed us around the city. She was  a true co-director at times  and I couldn't have made the film without her"
The intention had always been to shoot the film in English despite the fact that children from the Juhu slum in Mumbai would authentically speak Maharati, a local Hindi dialect.  Many of the younger actors who could speak English were educated in middle class schools and, in the minds of the production, were unsuitable for two important reasons - their appearance and general behaviour on camera, and the difficulties they might face filming in the slums within a community much removed from their own lives.
"We interviewed hundreds of young kids doing the lines in English and we were in despair really," says Colson.  "We didn't think we were going to be able to get there. But somebody had suggested that the younger children switch to speaking Beaufoy's lines in their own language and that somehow the characters could morph into English during the second act".
"Our casting director and co-director, Loveleen Tandan went out and did a quick translation. I think it's the toilet scene we have early in the movie and just got some young kids from the streets or from around, to play it in Hindi and they were hilarious. Suddenly they came to life.  Suddenly felt we definitely had to go this way. 
"So it's a decision really that we arrived at by accident but which, I think, has given the movie a real added layer of authenticity.  It has also enabled us to find those three incredible young child actors."
Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail who plays the young Salim and Rubina Ali, who plays the young Latika, were eventually cast from the slums but have since been placed into education by the production.  "We've managed to get them into school and hopefully they'll stay in the school until they're sixteen," says Boyle.  "The last time I went back there, they'd started to pick up a bit of English. Rubina, especially, was talking to me in English, which is amazing and Azza is really talented at drawing, supposedly. He loves drawing and shading."
Boyle's difficulty in finding his adult Jamal was mainly one of 'look'.  Although castings were held in Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi and Chennai, the team found that most of the candidates were too old for the part or were surprisingly the wrong shape.
"I couldn't find somebody young enough for this character," Boyle explains.  "And the young guys in Mumbai, because of the culture, they tend to be really well built.  They are in the gym because that's the look that's expected.  So if they are to make any kind of impact on films, they need that honed body and I really didn't want that body, you know. I wanted a really ordinary guy. I didn't want someone who looked like a hero."
But it wasn't Boyle who found Dev Patel to play Jamal it was his daughter.  "Caitlin is a big fan of 'Skins'. She said to her mum who was casting the film in the UK, "You should get him to see Dev Patel."  I hadn't really thought about Dev," he says.  "I'd seen a bit of 'Skins'.  I'd enjoyed it but… as soon as she said that, you thought, yeah.
"One of the things that was encouraging about him was that it pushed us towards casting the film very young.  So, initially we were thinking of having the teens played by eighteen year olds and then the final act of the film, if you like, when he's on the show, he'd be in his mid-twenties and I realised that was wrong - it's important that what happens to them, happens to them at thirteen.  That's what's extreme and unacceptable and very Indian about it.  So you get this seven, thirteen, eighteen age span and what they see in this short span of life is enough to fill a lifetime."
Patel was one of the very few people who ended up being cast from London.  The majority of the cast were from Mumbai.  "We felt Dev had a wonderful fish out of water quality," says Colson.  "He's immensely likeable - immensely sympathetic.  And we didn't want some sort of beefcake.  There's a great innocence to the character of Jamal, a great optimism if you like.  He's someone who never loses his goodness, despite all the various evils that are perpetrated on him.  And he's a character who never loses his innocence, really, despite everything that happens to him."
"I went for four auditions - five actually and after every single audition I was like, "Damn it. I haven't got it," Patel remembers of the casting process.  "I went home nearly crying, in tears.  Then I remember my mum was at the bank and I was meeting her to do shopping and when I arrived she had tears in her eyes. I said, "Mum, what's wrong?"  She said, "You wouldn't believe who I've just had a call from."  And she told me the news and we were ecstatic.  I was literally shocked.  I couldn't believe it to be honest and I really wanted to get hold of Danny to check if it was legitimate or if someone was playing a trick on me."
Being his first feature film role, and growing up in Harrow in North West London, Patel was nervous about portraying a character supposedly born and bred in the slums of Mumbai. He felt enormous pressure to get the accent.  Arriving some time before his scenes were scheduled to shoot, he immersed himself in the atmosphere of the locations to absorb the mannerisms and tone.
"I've had to play emotional scenes, physical scenes and it's really taken it out of me," he says.  "Danny really finds a way to get that right emotion out of you in a scene."
To illustrate the point, Patel talks through the winning scene on the 'Millionaire' set.  "I had won the money and I had to think back to Latika, the girl I love.  They actually stuck pictures of her and the little kids on the screen in front of me, so that I would just remember back and have a real smile.
"Danny likes improvising on set.  He's always encouraging you, on takes, to try different things. He'll do one take and once he's satisfied, he'll give you a new idea like, "imagine you feel this now" or "this has happened to you", so you play the scene from a totally different perspective and the story unfolds in a different way.  I found the end product is much more three-dimensional.
"When I first went in for the audition I only had a snippet of the script.  It was one of the most intense scenes.  I was fighting with my brother and he's saying, "You're crazy. You are not going to get this girl".  And I say, "I love her.  She's my destiny."  I felt "This is really intense."  I've grown up in London.  I'm a cheeky chappy.  I haven't really experienced a feeling like that before."
The immersion in Indian culture and taking the lead role has been an emotional experience for Patel.  He had visited India for a family wedding a few years prior to the shoot and had been badly bitten by mosquitoes and was prepared for the worst.  "I said, "I'm never coming back to this place ever, ever again".  And when I came back here I was all prepared with mosquito repellent and everything.  But it's been amazing.  It's like I found another piece of myself.  Being a London kid, a British Asian, growing up in London and coming to India, just to get in touch with your roots is really nice.  We have festivals in London and we do celebrate Diwali at home.  But to see it done in India is a totally different thing!"
When asked about his favourite moment during the shoot, Patel smiles.  ""Doing the scenes with Irrfan Khan [the Police Inspector] and Saurabh Shukla [Police Sergeant], I learned so much from them because they are totally different actors.  I was star struck at the start. I had just watched [Mira Nair's] The Namesake before Irrfan came on set and I was in awe because it was such a good performance.  Saurabh kept on making me laugh on set.  There is one scene where he is interrogating me and he's slapping me on the face and beating me, and he still managed to make me laugh because he improvised lines and I was actually crying with pain but inside I was laughing."
Although brothers, Jamal and Salim's characters were deliberately polarised to offer Boyle the opportunity to show the audiences how their choices take the characters on very different paths.  Both brothers are exposed to violence at a very early stage in their lives and yet each responds individually to the trauma of their mother's death - Jamal remains inherently good, while his brother, Salim pursues a life of violence and brutality.
When Boyle discovered Madhur Mittal and auditioned him for the role of Salim there was a shift in the consideration of age ranges.  Originally Mittal was to play the middle Salim, but Boyle felt that he had the maturity and gravity to play the older Salim.  After half a dozen auditions, Mittal was cast as Salim, but after a serious traffic accident, there was concern that Mittal might not be fit enough to take on the role.
A bike accident involving a rickshaw driver left Mittal with an aggressive scar on his chin.  "He banged into me and I fell off.  I got 12 stitches.  It helped me get into character," he laughs.  "Salim is supposed to be this tough guy, so it helped really."
Mittal's attraction to the character was mainly the idea that Salim was both an aggressive, self-serving personality, but with a hidden compassionate trait that only shows itself in the dénouement.  "He's a dream character for an actor to play, to be honest," Mittal admits.  "He's a guy who everyone would love to hate but he obviously has this softer side to him as well, which he doesn't want people to know, because he doesn't want people seeing he is a tender person"
"His relationship with his younger brother, Jamal is intriguing.   "They are the complete opposite to each other but still there is something that connects them.  They are brothers after all; they are born from the same mother and have the same blood running through their veins.  They really love each other but they irritate each other a lot, because Jamal is too nice for Salim and Salim is too bad for Jamal.  They hate each other but more than that, they love each other. So, it's like a very normal brotherly relationship."
Latika being the love interest, but also sharing very little screen time with Jamal meant the team needed to find someone who Beaufoy describes as "someone you would crawl across the earth for."
Beaufoy says the actress that Danny cast for Latika, Freida Pinto "…has got that extraordinary beauty alongside a strong sense of sadness about her, which we needed very much for her part in the film.
When researching the script, Beaufoy found that a considerable number of women, particularly from the slums, tended to take second place to the men in decision-making.  Having Latika as a passive character created difficulties.  "In terms of the drama, it's not very good to have this passive person, so I tried to make Latika a more active character.  But in truth, India takes over and she's made to be at the whim of these very powerful men, which is absolutely as it is in India."
Casting director and Indian co-director Loveleen Tandan contacted model Pinto's agent, saying there was a casting for the female lead.  Pinto explains "My agent said, "I think you should go for it since you are very interested in acting."  So I went and met her at her office and the first thing I thought was, she's really warm, really nice and she said, "It's a Danny Boyle film!" and I was like, "… Trainspotting!"  I knew Trainspotting really well because when I was in college we had a film appreciation course and we had Trainspotting as one of the films.  I really liked it," she smiles.
As casting continued, Pinto waited for six months before she finally knew she'd got the part.  "It was a rollercoaster ride to be honest because the first month after the audition with Loveleen, Danny came down for the test.  I was really nervous because I had never met a director close up in person before.  By the fourth month I thought, this wasn't working, the reason why they keep calling me back was because they think I'm not good enough and they're giving me another chance and that's it.  The fifth audition and I'm out of this.  So by the sixth audition I was almost in tears.  " But after the sixth month, when my agent called and said, "You're on girl!"  I was ecstatic, I just couldn't believe it until I actually went and signed my contract."
Approaching the character of Latika was a process that Pinto found exhilarating.  Having Boyle guide her through the scenes, offering advice and allowing the freedom to try fresh approaches to the script meant she quickly developed a solid understanding of where the character's strengths would come from.  "Danny wanted me to explore the character as much as I could.  Loud facial expressions really don't do much for an actor.  Internalisation is something that Danny really taught me."
Although all the scenes involving Pinto were intense, conveying her pain and helplessness, she was caught off guard at VT station when a passer-by mistook her for someone who was genuinely in distress.  She explains the scene,"These goons kept dragging me into the car and I'm screaming, "Jamal, Jamal!" literally asking people to help me and nobody really does and then they finally put me into the car and I come back to the next shot again.  This guy came up to me and said, "Are you okay?  Do you need any help?" and I just looked at him and said, "We're shooting".  He said, "You scared the life out of me, you know."  I was really happy because it was convincing."
Physical and character mannerisms that stretched across the three ages were vital if Boyle was to convince the audience that the older and younger characters were the same people.  Boyle encouraged the cast to watch each other on several occasions during rehearsals and the roles were switched so that the characters played themselves at a different age, cross-referencing as much as possible.
"You have to get people who can play each part and then you have to give a sense that they are the same person," he says.  "We didn't want to do a lot of it through make-up … or prosthetics or anything like that. We wanted them to feel like they naturally grew out of each other.  Once we'd got the eighteen year olds, we started to look back through the people that we'd auditioned to see who might resemble them in a way.
"But of course, a lot of it, no matter what you do, is down to the audience and the momentum of the story," he says.  "You have to do it with a bit of style really, a bit of confidence.  They have to step into those shoes as boldly as they can really and I'm a great believer that the audience will go with that."  But luck was on Boyle's side with Jamal.  "We discovered to our delight, that two of the 'Jamals' had big, sticky out ears.  So you'll notice the film, a lot of it is shot from behind their heads just so you think - "Look, it's the same guy.  He's got the sticky out ears as well.""
"It's a very difficult thing, having children, teenagers and adults all playing the same person," Beaufoy explains.  "The hair and make-up people did a lot of subtle work; pinning back ears and that kind of thing and worked with hairstyles. There's a specific shot in the film where you see the back of Jamal's head, which then mixes in smoothly to him five years later.  And he's got these very particular ears that slightly stick out, which in a subconscious way, helps knit characters together from young to old. It's a really difficult trick to pull off. But, interestingly, no one has said that they didn't believe that was him older or younger.  So, I guess, we pulled it off. But it's a very tough trick to make work."
Tanay Chheda (Jamal aged 13) recalls his first transformation into Jamal on set.  "We had all come to the office and the make-up people were there to see us.  I had really curly hair at that time while the other two Jamals had straight hair.  I wondered how would I look like them?  How could they match us? Then they were straightening my hair and after five minutes I looked up and there was smoke coming from my head.  But the result of sitting in the make up van for one hour was really good.  Chiraag, the production assistant, always see me in make-up but when I was on set without it he didn't recognise me and asked, "Are you Tanay's brother?""
'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' maintains a strong presence throughout the film.  The real life show, launched in May 2000 in India, is a huge sensation and was originally presented by Bollywood's screen legend, Amitabh Bachchan and, more recently, India's number one box office star Shah Rukh Khan.  The top prize in India's show is 20,000,000 rupees.  Anil Kapoor, who plays Prem Kumar in the film's fictional representation of the show, is a major Bollywood name himself, often playing the villain in major Bollywood blockbusters.  Kapoor explains how he came about being cast as the show's host.
"I got an SMS message from a dear friend of mine mentioning this film to me and Danny Boyle and I started sending e-mails to each other.  To be honest with you, I didn't take it that seriously.  And casually I happened to mention Danny Boyle's name in front of my children.  Both my children, my daughter and my son, they just sprang up and said, "Dad, that's Danny Boyle!"  I said, "Yar, really?"  They said, "He's made Trainspotting, The Beach.  He's a great director.  He's a fantastic director.  At least go and meet him. Go and see what it is all about""
Kapoor was able to relate to some of Kumar's character traits in that his own career began with small roles, bit parts, before he began securing major leads in some of Bollywood's biggest titles.  "This host, Prem Kumar, is also from the slums and he makes it big and he's a big star and he's become a big anchor. His show is the number one show.  He's the producer of the show as well as the host, so he controls everything.  To be honest with you, as an actor I've been working in Indian films for many, many years and obviously when I started my career, I started modestly and  worked my way up. So, you see, there were a lot of things that I could identify with but not the morality part.  He doesn't believe in any kind of morality.  He wants to hold onto his power."
"They sent the script over and- as usually in India we don't read scripts - I said, "Who's going to read this script now?"  I asked my son. I said, "You read the script." He read the script and said, "If you don't do this role, if you don't do this film I'm going to go, I'm walking out of this house.""
As an Indian actor, Kapoor was intrigued to see how well Boyle and the team translated their vision of India onto the screen and the results impressed him.  "The way in which Anthony and Danny look at India… It's just got that kind of feeling that the soil of India will be in there.  You'll be able to smell India in Slumdog Millionaire, which I feel none of the films that have been made by foreign filmmakers have really been able to capture before.  And the kinds of places where Danny has shot this film… I don't think even Indian films have been shot in those kind of locations."
Kapoor feels he has learnt a great deal from the experience of working with Boyle and a project that comes from outside the realms of Indian filmmaking.  "I never felt that I was working with a foreigner. I've also learned how to lead, how to keep the entire team together so that everybody gives their best, from watching how he handled everyone so well."
"If I was going wrong anywhere, he would say, "Keep it dry", because we Indians have this thing of over reacting, of over-expressing ourselves.  So there are times he would let us go, let me go, but still control me here and there but he was also completely open to all my instincts, my suggestions, you know, anything I came up with, my interpretation of every scene and most of the time he agreed with it, which is very, very surprising.  It is very rare for directors in India to agree to the kind of interpretation that actors have."

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