Suitability.
Susannah Cahalan's Brain on Fire, which compellingly chronicles a month that the author spent in hospital in a baffling psychotic state until a neurologist correctly deduced that she was suffering from a rare type of autoimmune encephalitis, is set to be adapted for film. And Dakota Fanning is going to be playing Cahalan. Learned this today; thought about it, revisited Fanning's Wikipedia page out of sheer curiosity, and concluded that although Fanning is a few years younger than Cahalan was at the time of her illness, the casting choice makes sense for a bunch of reasons. In descending order of importance, here are three of them:
a) We know that Fanning can handle this kind of role: she got a start playing a leukemia patient on ER when she was five.
b) There is actually a fair degree of physical resemblance between Fanning and Cahalan.
c) Fanning also appeared in Man on Fire, so she has experience with movie titles along these lines.
a) We know that Fanning can handle this kind of role: she got a start playing a leukemia patient on ER when she was five.
b) There is actually a fair degree of physical resemblance between Fanning and Cahalan.
c) Fanning also appeared in Man on Fire, so she has experience with movie titles along these lines.