…and examples where they either did or did not place such emphasis.
In Star Wars they obviously did not with Luke and Leia (despite Lucas’s claims that thet they were always meant to be twins) although in the prequels they did make an effort to get actors who resembled Hamill and Fisher. In Downton Abbey, Elizabeth McGovern greatly resembles the actresses who play two of her daughters, the third not so much ( raises an interesting potential future plot point).
How much emphasis does a casting director place on ensuring at least some resemblance. While pushing a Chinese actress as the natural daughter of a black family would be unlikely, would an otherwise perfect actress be rejected because casting guy said he could not have a strawberry blond in an otherwise swarthy family or vice versa?
I know that David Hyde Pierce’s resemblance to Kelsey Grammer, in both physical appearance and camp fussy mannerisms, was a strong factor in his being cast for Frasier.
When contacting Carol Burnett about a job, Viki Lawrence made a point of stressing the similarity between herself and the star. Burnett took note of it even though it was not a regular family member in a series.
I would rather see actors who can successfully demonstrate family chemistry than ones who actually look like each other. A low weight consideration is fine but choosing the wrong actor just because of a resemblance is a mistake particularly since families don’t all resemble one another.
Think about television shows it doesn’t seem to be that important. One case where there was an attempt at family resemblances was the Brady Bunch. But although the females were all blondes, they didn’t really resemble one another otherwise. And one of the boys was actually a blonde and had to have his hair dyed. The boys didn’t resemble each other much either.
There are stories that when Danny Thomas was looking for an actress to play his teenage daughter on “Make Room for Daddy”, that he was impressed with a newcomer named Mary Tyler Moore. Ultimately he didn’t cast her because her nose was drastically different from Thomas’s and his nose size was the subject of many jokes on the show. I don’t remember Sherry Jackson having a large nose, what I remember about her was the outfit she wore on “Star Trek:TOS” episode that introduced Majel Barrett to the cast. Why couldn’t Roddenberry have been fooling around with Sherry instead of Majel?
There was a production of Richard Wagner’s “Die Walkure” in the late 1980s which had Gary Lakes and Jessye Norman cast as the twins Sigmund and Sieglinde. At one point Sieglinde’s husband Hunding refers to how much the two look alike. Gary Lakes is white, Jessye Norman is black.
I saw something similar in a production of Lucia de Lammamoor by the New York City Opear in the 80s: Lucia was white; her brother was black. It was also set in Scotland and everyone was singing – in Italian.
That’s when I realized that you didn’t have to be accurate to be entertaining.
In TV shows, it’s a minor consideration. Talent is more important, but it might get you a job if the talent is roughly equal.
The Modern Family families don’t look particularly similar. Which makes sense, trying to cast two people that look like they could be related is one thing, but trying to get a whole extended family down is probably hopeless.
Kenneth Branagh cast Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves as brothers in Much Ado About Nothing.
The Eppes family on Numbers was not originally intended to be Jewish. Len Cariou was cast as the father, and Gabriel Macht as the FBI agent brother. But once David Krumholtz was cast as the math genius brother, the creators rethought the entire concept, bringing in Judd Hirsch and Rob Morrow to create a very believable all-Jewish family.
I don’t think there’s any kind of standard for this in casting. Some casting directors look for the resemblance and consider it important, and others don’t care as long as the actors mesh.
I see your *Marathon Man *and raise you *King of the Gypsies *(1978) which cast Judd Hirsch, Shelley Winters, Eric Roberts, Susan Sarandon and Brooke Shields as members of the same **Gypsy **family.
[Shakespeare nerd nitpick] Half brothers. Since Reeves’ character is supposed to be a bastard, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have mothers of different races. (Though, since race-blind casting is pretty common in stage productions of Shakespeare, I don’t know that Branagh was going for realism anyway.)
[/Shakespeare nerd nitpick]
We’ve had threads about cast resemblances before. I don’t know if the shows where I’ve noticed it have rejected talented actors in favor of someone wit the right look.
This relates but it’ll take a minute. Bear with me. When I watched Six Feet Under I never thought the kids resembled each other much, and no remarkable resemblances to the actors who played the parents, either (yeah, Claire’s red hair but that was really it.) Recently I was watching the current show, Parenthood. The scene opened with Peter Krause (who played Nate Fisher) in the middle of expressing some intense emotion (anger I think). For just a second I thought we were seeing Michael C. Hall (who played Nate’s brother David). In no other time or context did I see resemblance there, but in that angry moment Krause looked related. It was odd.
Now that I’ve mentioned that show I think there may have been some attention paid in the casting, but I think some of the actors (and directors) have done a good job at making those relationships believable. I’m thinking specifically of scenes with Mae Whitman and Lauren Graham.