If you could cast the main character (or the villain) of your favorite book, who would play the part? Tell us about the book and your cast choice.
12 thoughts on “Reader Friday: Cast the Main Character or Villain of Your Favorite Book”
I’d love to see Tilda Swinton as Moriarty in everything Sherlock Holmesian. She’s such a chameleon.
Seh kinda creepy good, isn’t she? She could play a man like she did David Bowie. (shiver)
The villain in my WIP (neither work nor progress in this period, I’m afraid) is inspired by the witch in the Rapunzel fairy tale, who loves her adopted daughter in such a possessive, controlling way that she locks her up in a tower and tries to kill the prince who would save her. The witch’s evil actions are rooted in emotional neediness and extreme loneliness and I’d like an actress who would show this vulnerability. Jodie Foster, maybe, or Joan Crawford, the queen of witches. My story takes place in Italy in the years immediately following WWII and loosely follows a family legend.
Good choices. Both would be excellent and very creepy. I like it.
My own novel series is about a 20s-something young women, now an inactive Marine who was summoned home to look for his godson, deals with paranormal phenomena. She has become a civilian police officer and must deal with the paranormal as well as her duties now as a mother and wife. She is physically small, well-trained in Tomiki Aikido and. lately, Krav Maga due to the upswing in violent crime in her once-small home town.
I believe Renee Felice Smith would be the right person for the role.
I had to look her up but she’s on NCIS LA and she’s adorable. Great choice.
Anthony Hopkins already played Hannibal Lector. The perfect choice. He was outstanding, so creepy and cool. Madds did a superb job, too, in the TV adaptation. I had my doubts in the first episode, but he pulled it off. I’d love to share a meal with either one of them. Well, maybe not a meal.
Gee, I wonder what sparked today’s question, Jordan. LOL
I think villain’s need love too. I knew you’d agree.
I didn’t think anyone could do Hannibal better than Anthony Hopkins, but Madds did an outstanding job of making him sexier and HORRIBLE!!! Those cooking sequences were hard to watch but you couldn’t look away. (shiver)
Thanks, Sue.
I am a big fan of Agatha Christie, and in my opinion, no one could have been a better choice than David Suchet to play Hercule Poirot. There were others, but he was the best by far. Another perfect casting was Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote.
Classic choices. Yes. Thanks, Rebecca.
My favorite novel is “The Testament” by John Grisham.
The main protagonist is Nate O’Riley. I always looked at him as reluctant hero type. He has to deal with his own “demons” before dealing with the “demons” in others. He comes across to me as a Indiana Jones type of person, so I guess I would cast Harrison Ford in the part of Nate O’Riley. But it would be Ford in is mid to late 30’s.
Enoch Cain, nicknamed Junior, is the villain in Dean Koontz’s From the Corner of His Eye. I can see Matt Damon playing this part, especially in the scene where he suddenly pushes his wife off of a fire tower to her death. Here’s the scene. It’s creepy, but perfect for Damon.
Junior shoved Naomi so hard that she was almost lifted off her feet. Her eyes flared wide, and a half-chewed wad of apricot fell from her gaping mouth. She crashed backward into the weak section of railing.
For an instant, Junior thought the railing might hold, but the pickets splintered, the handrail cracked, and Naomi pitched backward off the view deck, in a clatter of rotting wood. She was so surprised that she didn’t begin to scream until she must have been a third of the way through her long fall.
Junior didn’t hear her hit bottom, but the abrupt cessation of the scream confirmed impact.
He had astonished himself. He hadn’t realized that he was capable of cold-blooded murder, especially on the spur of the moment, with no time to analyze the risks and the potential benefits of such a drastic act.
After catching his breath and coming to grips with his amazing audacity, Junior moved along the platform, past the broken-away railing.
From a secure position, he leaned out and peered down.
She was so tiny, a pale spot on the dark grass and stone. On her back. One leg bent under her at an impossible angle. Right arm at her side, left arm flung out as if she were waving. A radiant nimbus of golden hair fanned around her head.
He loved her so much that he couldn’t bear to look at her. He turned away from the railing, crossed the platform, and sat with his back against the wall of the lookout station.
For a while, he wept uncontrollably. Losing Naomi, he had lost more than a wife, more than a friend and lover, more than a soul mate. He had lost a part of his own physical being: He was hollow inside, as though the very meat and bone at the core of him had been torn out and replaced by a void, black and cold. Horror and despair racked him, and he was tormented by thoughts of self-destruction.
I’d love to see Tilda Swinton as Moriarty in everything Sherlock Holmesian. She’s such a chameleon.
Seh kinda creepy good, isn’t she? She could play a man like she did David Bowie. (shiver)
The villain in my WIP (neither work nor progress in this period, I’m afraid) is inspired by the witch in the Rapunzel fairy tale, who loves her adopted daughter in such a possessive, controlling way that she locks her up in a tower and tries to kill the prince who would save her. The witch’s evil actions are rooted in emotional neediness and extreme loneliness and I’d like an actress who would show this vulnerability. Jodie Foster, maybe, or Joan Crawford, the queen of witches. My story takes place in Italy in the years immediately following WWII and loosely follows a family legend.
Good choices. Both would be excellent and very creepy. I like it.
My own novel series is about a 20s-something young women, now an inactive Marine who was summoned home to look for his godson, deals with paranormal phenomena. She has become a civilian police officer and must deal with the paranormal as well as her duties now as a mother and wife. She is physically small, well-trained in Tomiki Aikido and. lately, Krav Maga due to the upswing in violent crime in her once-small home town.
I believe Renee Felice Smith would be the right person for the role.
I had to look her up but she’s on NCIS LA and she’s adorable. Great choice.
Anthony Hopkins already played Hannibal Lector. The perfect choice. He was outstanding, so creepy and cool. Madds did a superb job, too, in the TV adaptation. I had my doubts in the first episode, but he pulled it off. I’d love to share a meal with either one of them. Well, maybe not a meal.
Gee, I wonder what sparked today’s question, Jordan. LOL
I think villain’s need love too. I knew you’d agree.
I didn’t think anyone could do Hannibal better than Anthony Hopkins, but Madds did an outstanding job of making him sexier and HORRIBLE!!! Those cooking sequences were hard to watch but you couldn’t look away. (shiver)
Thanks, Sue.
I am a big fan of Agatha Christie, and in my opinion, no one could have been a better choice than David Suchet to play Hercule Poirot. There were others, but he was the best by far. Another perfect casting was Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote.
Classic choices. Yes. Thanks, Rebecca.
My favorite novel is “The Testament” by John Grisham.
The main protagonist is Nate O’Riley. I always looked at him as reluctant hero type. He has to deal with his own “demons” before dealing with the “demons” in others. He comes across to me as a Indiana Jones type of person, so I guess I would cast Harrison Ford in the part of Nate O’Riley. But it would be Ford in is mid to late 30’s.
Enoch Cain, nicknamed Junior, is the villain in Dean Koontz’s From the Corner of His Eye. I can see Matt Damon playing this part, especially in the scene where he suddenly pushes his wife off of a fire tower to her death. Here’s the scene. It’s creepy, but perfect for Damon.
Junior shoved Naomi so hard that she was almost lifted off her feet. Her eyes flared wide, and a half-chewed wad of apricot fell from her gaping mouth. She crashed backward into the weak section of railing.
For an instant, Junior thought the railing might hold, but the pickets splintered, the handrail cracked, and Naomi pitched backward off the view deck, in a clatter of rotting wood. She was so surprised that she didn’t begin to scream until she must have been a third of the way through her long fall.
Junior didn’t hear her hit bottom, but the abrupt cessation of the scream confirmed impact.
He had astonished himself. He hadn’t realized that he was capable of cold-blooded murder, especially on the spur of the moment, with no time to analyze the risks and the potential benefits of such a drastic act.
After catching his breath and coming to grips with his amazing audacity, Junior moved along the platform, past the broken-away railing.
From a secure position, he leaned out and peered down.
She was so tiny, a pale spot on the dark grass and stone. On her back. One leg bent under her at an impossible angle. Right arm at her side, left arm flung out as if she were waving. A radiant nimbus of golden hair fanned around her head.
He loved her so much that he couldn’t bear to look at her. He turned away from the railing, crossed the platform, and sat with his back against the wall of the lookout station.
For a while, he wept uncontrollably. Losing Naomi, he had lost more than a wife, more than a friend and lover, more than a soul mate. He had lost a part of his own physical being: He was hollow inside, as though the very meat and bone at the core of him had been torn out and replaced by a void, black and cold. Horror and despair racked him, and he was tormented by thoughts of self-destruction.