sissy spacek in Badlands… wow!
Hugh Grant in About a Boy plays a lightweight irresponsible trust fund baby whose sole interest is scoring with women. Rarely has there been better casting.
Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. It’s a good thing Tom Selleck was unavailable.
Johnny Depp as Hunter S Thomson. I know he spent a lot of time researching, but if you watch the Hunter S Thomson documentary there’s clips of Hunter and Johnny (as Hunter) and half the time you won’t know which is which.
Samuel L. Jackson plays Nick Fury so well it’s like the part was written for him.
Yes, I know.
Keanu Reeves as Ted Logan in the* Bill and Ted *movies.
Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.
Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. The Academy agreed with me.
Jim Phelps: Okay, now, Rollin, for this next Impossible Mission, you have to look like Bela Lugosi…
Spoilers!
Tom Cruise was perfect in Magnolia, but equally perfect in Collateral. Although he has made most of his money showboating, there is an underlying cold, calculated killer in there for sure. Actually I would bet that the person he was in Collateral is probably the closest to his off screen personality (minus the killings of course.)
Clint Eastwood, CIA agent, In the line of Fire. Great movie, Eastwood was perfect for that role.
Lara Flyn Boyle as Dominique Francon
Walther Mathau as A.M. Valnikov
David Caruso as Howard Roarke
Sigourney Weaver as Dagny Taggart
I still have an issue with the Harry Potter casting. I thought Adrian Paul would have made a good Sirius Black.
Especially since they were able to use a stock photo of him from one of the Dirty Harry movies for a “back in the day” photo.
Everyone in The Godfather.
Everyone in The Princess Bride.
John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
I think Liam Neeson would have made a great Jack Reacher. He has the size and demeanor.
Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining and as Jake Giddes in Chinatown.
Walter Huston as Howard, the crusty old gold miner in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.
Sean Connery as James Bond.
I have to disagree. Nicholson was miscast as Jack Torrance. And Stephen King agrees with me on this.
The horror of the story was supposed to come from seeing a nice normal family man being driven insane. The problem with Nicholson is we’d already seen him play so many outrageous characters that we anticipated him going insane. He played Crazy Jack well but we never got the transistion from Good Jack.
Kubrick should have cast somebody like Tom Hanks. Seeing somebody like that going crazy and trying to kill his family would have been scarier than seeing Jack Nicholson do it.
The 1997 miniseries got this right when they cast Steven Weber.
Trivia note: Danny Lloyd, who played Danny Torrance in the movie, celebrates his fortieth birthday today.
Everyone in Casablanca.
Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock.
Everyone in I, Claudius, but John Hurt in particular. He played the psychotic Caligula to absolute perfection.
Donald Pleasance as Blofeld in You Only Live Twice and Heinrich Himmler in The Eagle Has Landed.
Andy Griffith in No Time for Sergeants.
Paul Scofield as Col. von Waldheim in The Train.
Vic Morrow as Sgt Saunders in Combat!