The kids were going insane, 50. I thought someone was going to get injured.

The first few days, I worked about seven hours on each scene with him. He just kept wanting to do it better. He never went to self-pity or said, 'What do you want from me?' even though it was difficult. I knew he had resilience and self-confidence. He worked very hard, never complained, never was in a bad humor.

I just knew his world. It was like the world I grew up in in Dublin. I knew gangsters and drugs and I was even in a band. It was like he was a long lost brother.

I had that feeling the minute I met him that I could do a movie about somebody coming back from the dead, ... One of the times when I was getting a little hyperbolic and melodramatic, I wrote down, 'A black-gangster Jesus with the wounds to prove it.'

I kind of grew up in a neighborhood like that, so I felt I knew 50, ... to go inside the ghetto and see what's the cause of the rage.

At the end of the movie people will wonder: Is this the real 50 Cent? Has he changed? Is he acting a part? All three are true,

It was like I'd known him for a hundred years.

I've liked rap music for 10, 15 years,

Everybody was wearing bulletproof vests. But I've filmed in Belfast; you get used to it, you know? I never felt threatened on the set.

I think there's an affinity with the Irish and black culture in many ways. I think tap emerged from Irish dancing when we came over with our hard shoes. Blacks watched it and developed it with hands and body and made it a different thing. There are many ways in how the cultures cross each other.