25 Things You Didn’t Know About Se7en
13. The Writer Plays The Very First Corpse In The Film
As mentioned, Fincher kept Andrew Kevin Walker around for the development of the movie - and when they needed a guy to strip to his underwear and lie very still, they thought of him.
That character was the very first corpse in the movie - and he isn’t actually one of John Doe’s. It’s a husband who’s been murdered by his wife, in a scene that basically exists to introduce the audience to the kind of detective that William Somerset is, and to plant the seed that he has one foot out of the door.
Walker took the role very seriously, highly conscious of the fact that if he, as a non-actor, screwed up a take, he’d be letting down the man who was in the process of making his career. Unfortunately, he’d just quit smoking, and it wasn’t going well.
The entire time he was lying there in a pool of freezing cold blood, staying as still as possible, Walker was having a succession of panic attacks brought on by nicotine withdrawal. But, grimly hanging in there, he pulled it off without having to run off and shake in a corner, and the scene went without a hitch.