Post by Jonathan Sadler

When Casting Seemed So Wrong It Became Right. I was at a Q&A screening the other night for Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy - it was an excellent, open and revealing Q&A and I fell a little bit more in love with Renée Zellweger again afterwards - that is one charming Texan! There’s a fascinating category of casting I’ve been thinking about since that evening — actors who were so seemingly miscast that the decision must have sent writers into therapy… only for those actors to become the definitive version of the character. Renée Zellweger was surely too Southern States America sweet, too homely, and too wholesome to be cast as a neurotic British publishing assistant in Bridget Jones. Helen Fielding probably raised an eyebrow, to say the least. Then when the lights dimmed in cinemas across the land, overnight she WAS Bridget. Sean Connery — a working-class, Scottish, slightly rough-around-the-edges actor — playing Ian Fleming’s polished Etonian spy. Fleming was horrified. Then Connery raised his eyebrow and changed pop culture forever. Later posters read Sean Connery IS James Bond. Michael Keaton — the stand up comedy actor — as...Batman? Fans practically took to the streets. Then he growled “I’m Batman,” and every other Bruce Wayne has been chasing that shadow since. Heath Ledger, a young blonde heartthrob — as The Joker? Cue internet meltdown. Now his performance is considered untouchable. There’s a strange kind of magic in some of these wildly incongruous choices. Sometimes the actor the fans want is not the actor the story needs, or gets. Sometimes the risky pick is the one who unlocks the character in ways the original creators never imagined. And sometimes the best casting is the kind that feels wrong… until it suddenly feels inevitable. And then there’s the other side of casting: the parallel universe Hollywood keeps locked away in a drawer. The versions we never saw: • Sylvester Stallone as Axel Foley • Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones • Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly • Burt Reynolds as James Bond All of these nearly happened. That’s what fascinates me. Casting only looks inevitable in hindsight. #casting #film #moviecasting