Nancy Callahan
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Nancy Callahan is a fictional character from the Sin City graphic novel series. She is connected to almost all the stories and is featured prominently in the miniseries That Yellow Bastard.
She was played by Jessica Alba in the 2005 movie adaptation. It is also confirmed Alba will reprise this role in Sin City 2 in a story dealing with events following That Yellow Bastard.
[edit] Background
Nancy is an exotic dancer who works at Kadie's and is featured in The Hard Goodbye, A Dame to Kill For, Just Another Saturday Night, and Blue Eyes. She is also mentioned in The Big Fat Kill. She is given a more prominent role in That Yellow Bastard, which details more on her past.
When Nancy was 11, she was abducted and almost raped by Roark Junior, a serial killer and the scion of Basin City's most important political family. She was saved by Det. John Hartigan (who would refer to her as "Skinny Little Nancy Callahan"), who shot Junior and castrated him, before being betrayed by his partner, Bob. Junior's father threatened to kill everyone Hartigan held dear, including Callahan, if he told anyone what had really happened. Nancy wanted to testify on behalf of Hartigan against Roark Jr., but Roark Sr. and the police dismissed her claims as post-shock and had her parents move away to keep her quiet. Fearing for her safety, Hartigan allowed himself to be wrongly convicted of Junior's crimes. That same night, she visited him in the hospital he was recuperating in. Hartigan insisted that Callahan forget about him completely for her own good, but she refused and vowed to write to him in prison every week "for forever," signing her letters "Cordelia" in reference to P.D. James' female private detective Cordelia Grey.
Callahan kept true to her word, and wrote to him weekly. When Hartigan received a visit from a mysterious, yellow-skinned stranger known only as the Yellow Bastard, and an envelope containing a human finger, he feared that the Roarks had harmed her and confessed to the murders so he could be released. He tracked her down to a strip club called Kadie's, where he found out, to his shock, that she had become an exotic dancer. Upon recognizing Hartigan, Nancy immediately jumped into his arms and kissed him. Fearing that he had been followed, and that Roark now knew who Callahan was, they left Kadie's, which was followed with a car chase/shoot-out with the yellow-skinned stranger, whom Hartigan wounded before they escaped.
Afterwards, Hartigan and Callahan went to a roadside motel, where Nancy confessed that she was in love with him and tried to seduce him. Hartigan refused, however, as he still thought of her as his surrogate daughter. Shortly after, Nancy was kidnapped by the Yellow Bastard, who was revealed to be Roark Junior, who had been resurrected but horribly deformed by means outside of conventional science. Junior tied Hartigan to a noose and left him to die as he took Nancy to his family's private farm to brutalize and kill; as they left, Hartigan pleaded with her not to scream, no matter what Junior did to her. Junior took her to his family's private farm, tied her up, and viciously beat her with a bullwhip, but she refused to scream; when Junior flew into a frustrated rage at her silence, she figured out that he was impotent unless his victims were screaming in pain, and mocked him for it.
Just then, Hartigan, who had miraculously survived and escaped, burst in and saved Callahan, castrating Junior and beating him to death. After he promised her that he would tell the world what had happened and destroy the Roark family, they shared a deep, passionate kiss. After she escaped, however, he realized she would never be safe as long as the Roarks were looking for him, and committed suicide.
Besides Hartigan, Nancy has another guardian angel in Marv, one of the drinkers who frequent Kadie's: she became quite friendly with the unstable, musclebound loner after he roughed up a frat boy who made her cry.
Her dancing attire is fashioned after a cowboy's wardrobe, with a lasso she uses in her routine. When not working as a stripper, she spends her time studying, reading, and writing term papers; Hartigan commented on this when he came to her apartment and mentioned how intelligent she seemed in high school from reading her letters.
| Sin City | |
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| Yarns | The Hard Goodbye | A Dame to Kill For | The Babe Wore Red and Other Stories | Silent Night | The Big Fat Kill | That Yellow Bastard | Daddy's Little Girl | Lost, Lonely, & Lethal | Sex & Violence | Just Another Saturday Night | Family Values | Hell and Back (a Sin City Love Story) | Booze, Broads, & Bullets |
| Films | Sin City | Sin City 2 (in production) | Sin City 3: Hell and Back (in production) |
| Characters | Marv | Jack Rafferty | Nancy Callahan | John Hartigan | Dwight McCarthy | Wallace | Miho | Kevin | Cardinal Roark | Ava Lord | Junior/That Yellow Bastard | Senator Roark | List of characters from Sin City |
| People | Frank Miller | Robert Rodriguez |
