You gonna mention Leigh and NOT mention Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler?:eek:
Two from the X-Men movies: Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I wasn’t altogether keen on the hairstyle for Wolverine in the first X-Men movies, but it looks a lot better in the promo shots for the new Wolverine movie.
**
Clint Eastwood** in pretty much any role where he’s a badass.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian. Even the accent works for me in that one, as he’s supposed to be a stranger in a strange land, so to speak.
Also Arnold as The Terminator. Nobody else could have done it right.
Hugh Laurie as House, ditto.
When the production team was talking about casting “3rd Rock from the Sun,” the first answer to “Who is going to play Dick?” was John Lithgow. Nobody else was ever considered or offered the role.
The first time I saw a preview for that show, I mentioned it to a friend of mine and he said he couldn’t imagine John Lithgow playing such an eccentric role. He remembered him from Terms of Endearment, and movies like that. I remembered him from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and The World According to Garp and knew he’d be perfect.
The character of Harry was pictured as a big fat couch potato who basically did nothing but get calls from their leader.
Then French Stewart answered the casting call and the production team rewrote the role for him. How could French Stewart NOT be cast as an alien?
Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List.
From Wikipedia:
Although Jackman is the better part of a foot taller than Wolverine has been depicted at in the comics, I agree that he’s a great fit for the role otherwise.
I thought David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck was spot-on.
Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach (and especially as Walter Kovacs) in *Watchmen *was so spot-on that it was scary. Most of the others were good too, but he was the best. Some of the background characters were eerily close, too (like the psychiatrist who was examining Kovacs, and the newsstand guy who was barely even seen.)
Also Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Dame Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall, and Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. (Don’t get me started on bad physical matches in the HP movies…I don’t want to go off on a tiff about how little Gary Oldman and David Thewlis looked like Sirius Black and Remus Lupin should have looked).
Except for one thing - the first paragraph of the book says Scarlett is not beautiful. I agree that the mannerisms are spot on, but since I saw the movie first, I wonder if it is a symptom of fitting Vivian Leigh into the character instead of the other way around.
Jeff Daniels as Gettysburg hero Joshua Chamberlain:
http://www.filmdope.com/Gallery/ActorsD/4155-7141.gif
I always thought Ed Harris (excellent in all the roles mentioned above) could also play Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson:
http://www.the-movie-times.net/pictdir3/actors/gallery/eharris/eharris8.jpg
http://chapters.ausa.org/stonewall/logo
And yet it is Daniels who reads the Gettysburg Address on the CD of music from the production. An exceptionally fine reading, and definitive if you ask me.
Val Kilmer as Jim Morrisson in The Doors. I thought the resemblance was uncanny.
Stephen Lang, who played Jackson in Gods & Generals, was very convincing to my Civil War buff of a friend.
He’d also played Pickett in Gettysburg!
Madonna and Eva Peron don’t look at all alike, aside from being women with blonde hair.
James Whitmore in “Give Them Hell Harry” looked like Truman’s twin.
The actor who plays Bishop Fisher on Showtime’s The Tudors (Bosco Hogan) is Bishop Fisher’s doppelganger.
Ben Kingsley as Gandhi.
Tak Hing Kwan, who portrayed Wong Fei Hung in scores of early HK martial arts movies, was told by WFH’s last wife “You look just like my late husband.”