Capote was slender when he was younger but at the time of the movie he was about average weight, and Hoffman isn’t exactly a fat guy. I thought he’d had to shrink himself to play the 5’4" Capote, but turns out it was only a few inches. Hoffman’s around 5’9".
Cruise was also most definitely not Lestat, a lanky, blond, tall guy. Ann Rice was reportedly in a snit about his playing her pet vampire but came around once the movie was made.
On a related note, one minor problem I had with Geena Davis in A League of Their Own is that fact she played a catcher and people with her body type–tall and lanky–rarely play that position. It would’ve been more believable if Davis’ character was a pitcher, outfielder, or at first base since those are are the positions the taller players on a baseball team usually play. (However, it should be mentioned that Debra Winger–who would physically be believable as a catcher–was originally cast in Davis’ role.)
True but I had more trouble with her swing.
:rolleyes:
What? You don’t think it was economic reasons behind casting Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington as brothers in Much Ado About Nothing? Or John Wayne as Genghis Khan? How about, oh, I dunno, Tom Cruise as Jack Preacher?
Why the rolleyes? Seems like a reasonable enough opinion.
Jose Ferrer as Toulouse Lautrec in Molin Rouge. He sometimes walked on his knees to play the diminutive artist.
Morgan Freeman as the middle-aged Caucasin Irish redheaded Ellis “Red” Redding in The Shawshank Redemption. When I tell people who haven’t read the Stephen King novella his description of the character, their mouths literally fall open.
Paulina Porizkova played Golda Meir in an sketch on SNL.
About 5’4"-5’5" (depends on who you ask). So, a difference of almost 1’…
Randle Patrick McMurphy was a burly, ruddy, red-haired Irishman, but somehow the lanky, dark-haired Jack Nicholson was able to breathe life into the character on his own.
Similarly, tall, blond, handsome Paul Bettany as small, dark, “reptilian”-looking Stephen Maturin in Master and Commander. I enjoyed his performance, mainly because I’ve always just ignored O’Brien’s description of Stephen, and I think Bettany got the tone right.
First example that springs to mind is Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness in Legend. In real life Tim Curry is a normal man; in Legend he is a muscular, eight-foot-tall colossus with gigantic horns. It’s a very impressive make-up/prosthetic/direction job. It would probably have been easier to cast a tall bodybuilder and dub him with Tim Curry’s voice, and although he was one of the few bright spots in that film I’m eternally puzzled as to why they cast him in the role.
I mean, it’s as if they decided to have Kevin Spacey as… I dunno, Grand Admiral Thrawn in a hypothetical future Star Wars film. Although on further reflection he would probably work in the role. They’d just have to paint him blue every day.
That’s a great example, Ashley Pomeroy. I really enjoyed Curry’s performance, although I wonder if he suffered headaches or neck pain from wearing those horns.
In this clip, I noticed that Curry is never shown face-to-face in the same scene with Mia Sara. I don’t know much about film making, but it seems to me that this allow each actor to alter their eye lines up/down from where they would normally be. This gives the impression that Curry is speaking down to her from his character’s eight foot height, and she likewise speaks “up” to Curry. I wonder if Curry stood on a box, or if he just spoke his lines to a spot on the floor. The camera mostly shoots Curry from below as if the audience, too, would always be looking up at him.
<<Insert Tom Cruise short joke here>>
In the comics. In the movies, he’s exactly as shown.
50 Cent in All Things Fall Apart
Christian Bale in The Machinist
Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13. Antony Quinn as Richard Nixon in Nixon.
Meryl Streep as the rabbi in Angels In America.
How about Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia? The real Lawrence was not 6’2" tall, unlike the actor playing him in the film.
(Lawrence was 5’5" or thereabouts, IIRC)