MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW. Pretty much every character is a Walking Spoiler, so proceed with caution.
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Alfred Borden
"The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything."
Portrayed By: Christian Bale
A working-class magician with the stage name "The Professor", and a rival to Robert Angier. He was arrested at the start of the movie for allegedly murdering Robert Angier. Their rivalry started when he accidentally caused the death of Angier's wife in a magic trick. When in jail, he received Angier's journal, and began to go through the events that Angier had experienced.
He is actually a set of identical twins (called Albert and Freddie in the books) sharing Alfred's identity, with the one playing Alfred while the other disguises as Fallon, and the two regularly switch characters between them. The secret is kept to everyone, including their lovers.
- Adaptational Heroism: Borden in the books is far more morally grey than he is in the film. The first time he and Angier meet, he shoves over Angier's assistant when revealing that a seance he's performing is a sham. This actually causes Angier's assistant, who is also his pregnant wife, to have a miscarriage that results in her falling into depression, something he never learns. They also both one up and ruin one another's acts for a while, and though Borden never talks much about what he did to Angier, he admits he wasn't guiltless in it all, which is very true as we learn from Angier's journal that Borden once replaced some stage knots for an escape trick Angier was attempting to perform with inescapable knots, nearly resulting in Angier drowning.
- Adaptation Personality Change: Borden in the books was a much more consistent, stable individual, rather than the stormy Mood-Swinger bordering on Mad Artist he is in the film. This is because in the book, both twins had even more fully-committed to the illusion than their film counterparts, to the point of experiencing Loss of Identity and becoming a The Dividual. They shared every aspect of their lives, including their wife, and in the end the surviving twin admits under duress that not even he remembers which one he is anymore.
- Always Identical Twins: The two are completely identical, allowing both of them to appear as Alfred Borden, or as Fallon by dressing up in a fatsuit and spectacles.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not known whether the nice Borden was aware of what the jerkass Borden told his wife in his stead, which was one of the factors that led to her suicide, though it's implied that he was not made aware. It's also further implied that he doesn't know of his brother's callous comments about the suicide when he's with Olivia, which leads to Olivia abandoning his brother in disgust.
- Bullet Catch: Definitely not played straight. He has to get two fingers chopped off for it, as does his twin.
- Coin Walk Flexing: While kissing his mistress Olivia, Borden is shown rolling his wedding band across his fingertips. This shows both his dexterity as a magician and that he doesn't take his marriage seriously unlike his true other half.
- The Determinator: He go out of his way to best Angier and match his twin near exactly — no matter how much hell he has to go through to do it.
- Dyeing for Your Art: An extreme In-Universe version. Since one of the twins loses two fingers due to Angier sabotaging one of his acts, the other one agrees to replicate the damage on his own hand to keep being a perfect match for his brother. They also have a matching brow-scar that was presumably recreated in the same fashion.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- The jerkass Borden tries to save the drowning Angier onsight.
- The nice Borden may be the Fallon appalled that Borden cripples Angier. He in general is a family man and while possibly the smarter one of the two, is also less interested in the obsession.
- Fingore: He lost two fingers when Angier sabotaged his bullet catch trick. His twin also gets the same fingers deliberately chopped off so they can preserve their act of sharing the same identity.
- Handicapped Badass: After losing two fingers, his repertoire of tricks goes down, but he eventually trains to the point that he's almost as good as he was with them. It's pointed out just how difficult it is to be a magician with a mutilated hand.
- Heel Realization: The dying Borden who is presumably the one who loved Olivia, was wholly obsessed with the craft above all, probably was the one who crippled Angier, and was desperate for Angier's secret when the other one urged him to move on. He seems to realize how awful he was with his final words to "Fallon", apologizing for all that he's done; where along the process of Olivia leaving him for his callous attitude and trying to free Angier from the drowning tank is up to interpretation.
- Iconic Item: His red bouncy ball, which he uses in his original Transported Man act, and hangs on to in the years since. Even Caldlow comments on his attachment to it.
- Insufferable Genius: Sure, he's a good magician, just a bad performer.
- It's Personal: He doesn't take well the fact that Angier rips off The Transported Man from him.
- Jerkass: Or so it seems. Turns out they are. Their dedication to the trick, caused Julia to die in a tragic (and preventable) accident, and it drove Sarah to suicide. True one twin loved her, but the other twin didn't and he was nasty and abusive towards to her, and the one who did love her didn't do anything to stop it. Eventually poor Sarah couldn't take it anymore.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Insists that the Langford Double will be the better knot for the water escape trick, despite Cutter's warnings that the knot is too dangerous to use since if the rope swells the assistant can't slip it. In the end Borden learns the hard way that Cutter was right when Julia drowns in the tank.
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: Borden makes himself slightly less worthy of contempt than Angier, as he never attempts to kill Angier, despite Angier trying twice to kill him, and Fallon once. Even the more obsessive Borden tries to save Angier during his frame-up.
- Borden always attempts to sacrifice his own life, while Angier tends to sacrifice others including his own clones. This, combined with Borden's love for Jess, Sarah and Olivia makes him more sympathetic.
- One of the twins is an even lighter shade of grey, as he is the only one out of the three main protagonists to try to end the cycle of revenge.
- Meaningful Name: Rosalyn and Marilyn Borden were twin actresses who had numerous roles between The '50s and The '80s, meanwhile, Alfred Borden is revealed to be two identical twins at the climax.
- Mood-Swinger: Borden has a very mercurial temperament with Angier noting that even his own personal diary seems to be fighting with itself. This is actually because the brothers, while identical in appearance, aren't identical in personality. The one who loves Sarah is calmer and more introverted while the one who loves Olivia is hot-tempered and extroverted.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Averted at first, since Julia's death isn't enough for the twins to drop the act. It isn't until the end of the film when his life and career are destroyed that the surviving twin decides it was most definitely not worth it at all.
- Out-Gambitted: Numerous times by Angier, although Borden comes out on top.
- Pet the Dog: He might be a wildly inconsistent husband, but even though his diaries reveal he secretly resents his daughter as much as his wife in his dark moods he does seem to try to avoid lashing out at her. With the reveal that Alfred is actually two different people, this demonstrates that Freddie was overjoyed at the thought of becoming an uncle, and after being imprisoned seems to care very deeply for his niece's well-being.
- Portmanteau: "Alfred" is implied to be the combined name of the shared persona created by twins Al and Freddie, these being the nicknames used by Sarah and Olivia respectively to refer to Alfred, of course, both women not knowing that said "Alfred" is two different people.
- Pyrrhic Victory: The surviving Borden kills Angier and reunites with his daughter, but must live with the loss of his wife, his twin brother and the ruin of his career.
- Rival Turned Evil: To Angier, initially. It gets complicated from there.
- Technician Versus Performer: Borden is the analytical, craft-focused technician compared to Angier’s performer, needing no help to create his tricks but taking much longer to get his presentation down.
- Between the twins themselves, the one who loves his wife is even more the technician, implied to do most of the brainwork and suffer from social awkwardness. His brother still seems more clever at trick-making than Angier, but is more sociable and extroverted.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Borden doesn't consider killing Angier even when the latter tries to kill him twice, but all that goes out the window when Angier shows up at the prison where Borden is incarcerated, bringing Borden's young daughter with him. Both being blatantly accused of the murder of the man before him, and Angier bringing the girl into the fold causes Borden to just be done with it and kill the bastard (that is, the Borden who isn't being executed).
- Tomato Surprise: Him actually being two people sharing a single identity, and the other always disguised as Fallon when one is appearing as Borden.
- Twin Switch: How Cutter guesses he performs the Transported Man. In fact, the Bordens use it for their entire life.
- Walking Spoiler: It's impossible to really talk about him without spoiling the major plot twist at the end.
- What Have We Ear?: A favorite trick of his to impress children.
Robert Angier
"He lives in his act."
"Man's reach exceeds his imagination!"
Portrayed By: Hugh Jackman
An aristocratic magician with the stage name "The Great Danton", and a rival to Borden. He was found dead in a water tank at the start of the movie, allegedly murdered by Alfred Borden. Originally a companion to Borden, the two developed a rivalry when Borden caused the death of Angier's wife, Julia. Angier decided to pay back by trying to be better than Borden in his magic career, and resorted to increasingly unpleasant tactics, eventually stealing Borden's encrypted journal to find the tricks behind his Transported Man trick.
In a way, he didn't die. The magic trick he was showing when he was "killed", his own version of the Transported Man, works by using a magical machine invented by Nikola Tesla that creates a clone of him in a displaced location, while the original Angier is deliberately drowned. After his supposed murder, the surviving clone "renamed" himself to his real name, Lord Caldlow, having lived under the Robert Angier pseudonym the whole time.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not clear if the last Angier seen in the film is the original or just another clone created by Tesla's machine. Even Angier himself doesn't know.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: As Lord Caldlow. It's hard to decide if the character was always this way or slowly grew into it as the years passed..
- Clone Angst: He gets philosophical about whether he is the original or the clone after each trick. Doesn't help that, after the first use of the machine, the Angier inside it shoots the other one, while during the shows, the Angier in the machine is the one who constantly drowns while the Angier outside repeats the act in the next show.
- Crusading Widower: His feud with Borden is initially driven by rage over his wife's death.
- The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: In the beginning, Angier has a thoroughly sympathetic motive for his rivalry with Borden. By halfway through the film, he himself admits he doesn't care about it anymore; revenge and obsession have become their own self-sustaining motives.
- The Determinator: Whereas Borden's case was kind of justified, Angier went kind of mad. He kills himself multiple times just to please his fans and best Borden.
- Driven by Envy: Part of his (initial) motivation, Borden has his wife and child while all Angier has is the memories of his dead wife Julia.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He needs the validation of the prestige so much that he'd rather drown the version of himself that doesn't get to experience it every time he does the trick. He assumed Borden had to be the same and never considered he would be willing to share the limelight with his twin.
- Expendable Clone: Deconstructed. If you believe "the real" Angier is "the man in the box" then he killed himself in his first show. If you believe it's "the prestige" then Angier was shot by his clone during the first test of the machine.
- Final Speech: After the surviving Borden twin shot him, he gives a final speech about their rivalry and how it drove them both to tragic ends before dying of his gunshot wound.
- Go Seduce My Archnemesis: He ordered Olivia to become a spy under Borden so he can know about the trick behind his Transported Man trick. It catastrophically backfires for him specifically and hurts everyone involved.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: After his wife, Julia, drowns onstage, setting the rivalry between him and Cutter (at first) against Borden.
- Instant Death Bullet: Played straight with one of his clones, averted with Angier himself.
- Mad Artist: To explain why would be spoileriffic.
- Motive Decay: As he spirals deeper and deeper into obsession, Angier stops caring about why he wanted to outdo Borden, only caring about hurting his rival as deeply as possible.Angier: I don't care about my wife, I care about his secret.
- Non-Idle Rich: Is revealed to be of wealthy nobility and his real name is Lord Caldlow yet wants to be a common magician. This explains why Angier is able to fund several expensive start-ups despite several failures at the hands of Borden and then fund Telsa's research.
- Out-Gambitted: Between him and Borden, and no good comes of it to Angier.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: Angier starts the film as the more sympathetic of the pair while Borden comes across as a cold and clinical jerk. As the film goes on, Angier becomes so consumed with his desire for revenge that the lines increasingly blur. By the end where he's framed Borden for murder while also having devolved into killing his own clones by the dozens, he's pretty firmly cemented himself as the villain.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: He's able to use Cutter's connections to get right into the big theaters. In contrast to Borden who's first solo gig is in a cheap music hall.
- Skewed Priorities: He may well be enriching himself with the endless matter replicator he commissioned from Tesla, or even revolutionize the meaning of industrial production with it. Instead, he uses it for a magic trick and a convoluted suicide cycle on the chance to land Borden on hot water with the law. At that point, it wasn't even about the magic and wonders; it was about vengeance upon Borden.
- Technician Versus Performer: Angier is brimming with charisma, charm, and a love of the limelight, especially compared to Borden, and even back when they were undercover plants in their teacher’s audience. Angier notably has his orenstation down immediately, but relies on others to actually come up with his tricks, and mentions being obsessed with the “prestige” part of the trick the most, and proves it enough to kill the version of himself who can’ experience it every night he pulls off the transporting man trick.
- Twinmaker: How the Transported Man really works. Angier blinds the audience with a flash of electricity and sends his body down a trap shut to be drowned, while a cloned Angier appears 40 feet across the room to everyone's amazement. All the while Angier doesn't know if he will be the one who dies or the one who appears.
- Twin Switch: Between him and Root.
- The Unfettered: He was initially unwilling to "get your hands dirty" like killing doves for his acts. As the story progresses he does anything to upstage Borden such as shooting him, kidnapping, stealing his act, framing him for his own death and killing his clones 100 times (or himself since he first shoots the Angier who appears a few meters from the machine) for the Transported Man.
- Walking Spoiler: The secret behind the Real Transported Man is one of the plot's main twists.
- Was It Really Worth It?: In the end he is resolute that it was, which is disgusting considering the lengths he took.
John Cutter
"Obsession is a young man's game."
"Every great magic trick consist of three parts – or acts."
Portrayed By: Michael Caine
An ingenieur who works with Borden and Angier.
- Almighty Janitor: He's long moved on from the limelight to behind the scenes, but he's been in the business long enough that he's good friends with most of the theatre owners and agents in London. So he can call in favors to help his young protégé get his big break.
- Cassandra Truth: He told Angier that Borden was using a double the entire time.
- Cool Old Guy: A snarky and experienced ingenieur. And unlike his students, he won't let the magic industry steal his morals.
- Ignored Expert: He repeatedly tells Angier that Borden's trick was likely accomplished by switching with a body double. Angier disregards this, insisting it has to be more complex. It turns out they were both right. Cutter's assessment is technically accurate but also a massive understatement.
- The Man Behind the Man: He's the one who finds the theatres for Angier to perform at. He also builds the devices, contraptions, and designs for the illusions that Angier performs. Except the last one.
- The Mentor: To both Angier and Borden.
- Unwitting Pawn: Angier deceives him into believing he's been murdered by Borden so Cutter's testimony will help convict him.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Towards Angier after he sees him alive and well after previously thought to be dead, as Lord Caldlow, and letting Borden hang.
Nikola Tesla
"Exact science is not exact science."
"Nothing is impossible Mr. Angier - what you want is simply expensive."
Portrayed By: David Bowie
The famous real-life inventor currently working in America who helps Borden and Angier with their magic. Actually, he had never helped Borden. Borden deceived Angier into going to America and pour all of his resources on a nonexistent magical Tesla machine that Borden supposedly used to create his Transported Man trick. Unfortunately for both of them, Tesla did create a magical machine, a machine that can clone things perfectly.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Nikola Tesla Was a Wizard. He invents a duplication machine. In this case, however, it is pretty close to what was and is being said about Tesla in Real Life.
- Cassandra Truth: He repeatedly warns Angier against giving in to his obsessions, citing his own experience with the self-destructive nature of it. Angier ignores Tesla at every turn and pays the price for it.
- Creepy Monotone: Fitting, considering Tesla's mental instability.
- Irony: Angier seeks Tesla to commission a device to use on his magic show, Tesla being an inventor who was notoriously bad at promoting himself (as Borden was), as well as being antagonized by Thomas Edison, who sought to tarnish his reputation and bury his legacy, similarly to what Angier himself is trying to do to Borden.
- Mad Eye: Has one eye with a dilated pupil and one without
, though this is due to the fact that David Bowie had permanently damaged his pupil following a fight he had at age ~15. - My God, What Have I Done?: He regrets creating the Transported Man machine and urges Angier to destroy it. He likely realized the horrific moral and philosophical implications that come with the ability to duplicate entire humans.
- Twinmaker: He made one for "teleportation" purposes.
Alley
"You're a magician. Who's gonna believe you?"
Portrayed By: Andy Serkis
Tesla's assistant.
- American Accents: Sports a Noo Yawk accent.
- Fanboy: Of Angier's.
- Pet the Dog: He appears genuinely distressed when Telsa wants to use his cat for an experiment.
Fallon
Portrayed By: Christian Bale
Borden's mysterious ingenieur after Julia's death. Fallon is a constructed identity used to disguise the other of the Borden brothers when one of them is appearing as Alfred Borden. The two constantly exchange characters as part of their kayfabe.
- Buried Alive: By Angier. He gets dug out, though.
- Enigmatic Minion: Seems to be this to Borden, as nobody really seems to know anything about him. A necessity, as the Borden twins take turns being Fallon.
- Foreshadowing: Fallon is never shown attending Angier's shows. This is, presumably, because there's only the necessity for one of the Borden brothers to be there.
- The Man Behind the Man: Played with. Albeit both Borden brothers interchangeably portray "Fallon", it's implied by the way that the jerkass Borden berates Fallon for not figuring out Angier's trick, that it's actually the nice Borden who's actually the ingenieur on their scheme.
- Mysterious Past: Lord Caldlow's solicitor notes that Fallon has barely any known information and thus likely won't be able to keep custody of Jess after Borden's imprisonment. This is because "Fallon" isn't real, but an alias for the Borden twins to operate alongside their brother.
- The Quiet One: He appears for a long time to be The Voiceless, but he eventually says two lines in the film. This is because of his sounding alike to Borden.
- Secret Identity: There never was a real Fallon. He was merely a cover identity being used in tandem by the Borden brothers.
- Walking Spoiler: Because of the fact that he is not real, but a cover identity, it is rather hard to discuss his role without giving away a major twist.
- Wham Shot: When Borden bounces the rubber ball to him after their last meeting there's a closeup of his hand as he catches it, showing two fingers of his gloved hand sticking out, indicating that he has two missing fingers, just like Borden.
- Wham Line: "Goodbye". Not what he says, but how he says it in Borden's East End accent.
Gerald Root
Portrayed By: Hugh Jackman
A washed-up actor who Angier uses for a double for his first attempt at replicating Borden's Transported Man trick.
- The Alcoholic: One of the reasons why the New Transported Man does not quite work.
- Blackmail: Towards Angier and Cutter after Borden tells him a false story of how his double took all of his power from him, and began to make unreasonable demands.
- Classically-Trained Extra: As quoted above, he is a Shakespearian actor.
- Identical Stranger: A random actor who just so happens to bear an impressive resemblance to Angier. Cutter hires him for this reason.
- Informed Deformity: Borden claims him to be noticeably more overweight then the real Angier but Hugh Jackman isn't made to look any worse beyond a disheveled hair and wardrobe.
- Jerkass: He's a drunken leech who quickly resorts to blackmail, and mocks Angier with false superiority.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It is never shown what becomes of him after Angier starts to use Tesla's duplication machine.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Gender-Inverted Trope, obviously.
Sarah Borden
"I know what you really are!"
Portrayed By: Rebecca Hall
Borden's wife, a perceptive and intelligent woman.
- Ambiguous Situation: It’s not made clear if she had actually figured out the specific truth when she hanged herself or if she simply figured out she was being lied to. If she did know, it’s also not clear if she hanged herself because of the deception or because she’d thought she’d gone crazy.
- Break the Cutie: Borden, or rather, his twin, does this to her over time.
- Driven to Suicide: Hangs herself when she realises what her marriage really is.
- Gone Mad from the Revelation: If you accept that she did figure out Borden (Alfred), was a twin, she clearly is so terrified by it that she goes mad.
- Lady Drunk: Turns to liquor over the pain of not having Alfred's full commitment to their relationship.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Played with. Sarah gets hinted at Alfred's infidelity with Olivia when the latter uses an Affectionate Nickname for him in front of her. However, she's Entertainingly Wrong courtesy of both her husband and his twin, the latter of whom is the one romancing Olivia. Under the prospect of losing their ruse, they withheld the truth from everyone, including both Sarah and Olivia. The uncertainty of her husband's behavior leads Sarah to commit suicide.
- Spot the Impostor: She can always tell when her husband really means it when he tells her he loves her. Over time, it's suggested that she figures out what's really going on.
Olivia Wenscombe
Portrayed By: Scarlett Johansson
An assistant to both Angier and Borden.
- Distracted by the Sexy: As Cutter says, a pretty assistant is the easiest form of misdirection.
- Entertainingly Wrong: She takes Borden's Anguished Declaration of Love as an obvious lie after he just declared that he never loved Sarah and only ever loved her. She concludes that he is an inhuman narcissist to say such about the mother of his child. It turns out that Borden is being honest with her, but since he's unwilling to explain to her that he's a twin just like the other was unwilling to tell Sarah, Olivia is right to leave, as Borden still chooses to only deliver half-truths to their respective lovers.
- From Bad to Worse: She abandons both Angier and later Borden due to their callous attitude towards their late wives. By leaving Angier for Borden, she went out of the frying pan into the fire, though she didn't realize this until much later.
- Lovely Assistant: She is hired mainly for her looks, rather than experience.
- The Mistress: Becomes one to Borden, the one who loves magic more than Sarah.
- Ms. Fanservice: Wears some very skimpy outfits on stage, and is often seen in nightwear offstage.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Twice.
- She is sent by Angier to engrace herself to Borden, and she ends up abandoning Angier because he basically sent her off to Borden as if she were a stagehand on an errand, and also following Angier's own dismissive comments about his own late wife. It helps that she realizes her love for Angier will always be unrequited, while Borden actually reciprocates her feeling for him (or, at least, one of them does).
- She later abandons Borden too, given how dismissive he is himself about his wife's suicide.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Towards Borden's twin after he drives Sarah to suicide.Olivia: You married her. You had a child with her.
Borden's twin: Yes. Part of me did. But the other part - the other part didn't. The part that found you, the part that's sitting here right now.
Olivia: You could be in some other cafe saying the same thing about me right now. It's inhuman to be so cold.
Julia McCullough
Portrayed By: Piper Perabo
Angier's wife.
- The Lost Lenore: Angier greatly mourns her loss. It's when he's stopped caring about her death and only wants to outsmart Borden that it's become clear how far he's fallen.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Her death is what sets off the feud between Angier and Borden. While Julia is the first life lost, she is by no means the last.
- Suicidal Overconfidence: She's so confident that she can slip out of any knot underwater that she gives the okay for Borden to change the knot they usually use. Julia's overconfidence costs her life.
Lord Caldlow
Spoiler in this image.
Borden: You must be Lord Caldlow—
Angier: Caldlow. Yes, I am. I always have been.
Angier: Caldlow. Yes, I am. I always have been.
Portrayed By: Hugh Jackman
An aristocrat who is a collector of machines used in magical acts. He is actually Robert Angier, and Robert Angier is his pseudonym. See his folder for tropes that describe him and his Caldlow persona.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: Acts through his lawyer to cover the fact that he's Angier himself. Or maybe the most recent clone.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: He spends his fortune basically becoming a magician and entertainer, and essentially engages in a monstrous pursuit trying to one-up a rival magician.
Owens
