Rorschach test: Jackie Earle Haley won coveted role with self-made audition tape

Encouraged by fan chatter online that he’d make a good Rorschach, Haley made his own costume, and acted out scenes from the screenplay. He sent the tape to the producers of “Watchmen.”

After impressing the producers and director Zack Snyder, Haley became Rorschach – and in the process was reunited with his “Little Children” co-star Patrick Wilson. Wilson had already been cast as Nite Owl, Rorschach’s former crime-fighting partner.

“For me it was kind of interesting, to show up on the set and to basically, at least at the start, to know one guy, to only really have one friend there,” Haley said in a recent press interview. “And I did internally focus on that, because Rorschach only has one friend. And it happens to be the same guy. So there’s a neat parallel there.”

Rorschach is the most obsessive of this group of obsessives; when the superheroes in “Watchmen” are forced to retire by an act of Congress, Rorschach presses on in violation of the law. When one of their own is murdered, it’s Rorschach who believes someone is out to get the masks, and won’t let the investigation stop.

“This guy’s so lost in this world,” Haley said. “The cops don’t like him, the pedestrians don’t like him, his own masked vigilante partners don’t like him. If it wasn’t for Nite Owl, this guy would be absolutely, completely alone. And really, Nite Owl doesn’t even like the guy! If you really look at it, he puts up with him! But he does care.”

Rorschach’s drive results from his neglected upbringing, Haley said.

“He’s a victim of his mom’s own self-centeredness. … He ended up in a home at age 11 only to discover they weren’t much better at raising him than his mom was,” he said. “And I think he finally reached this point in life where he needed this black and white sense of the world. Because he was such a victim of the grey complexities.