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Jul 06, 2011 22:50

Last week, I was working on casting for Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Now I'm posting it.


Our hero, Richard Mayhew.

He was a fresh-faced, boyish young man, with dark, slightly curly hair and large hazel eyes;he had a rumpled, just-woken-up look to him, which made him more attractive to the opposite sex than he would ever understand or believe.





Except for the fact that McAvoy has blue eyes, I think he's perfect. He's also got the slightly-bumbling thing down, and can easily be a badass later (see XMFC).

Next, the one who turns Richard's world upside-down, Door: Ellen Page.

Richard realized he cold not tell what color her eyes were. They were not blue, or green, or brown, or grey; they reminded him of fire opals...

...her hair, when washed, was a dark shade of auburn, with copper and bronze highlights. Richard wondered how old she was: fifteen? Sixteen? Older? He still couldn't tell.





The Marquis de Carabas: Chiwetel Ejiofor

His eyes burned white in an extremely dark face. And he grinned white teeth, momentarily, as if at a private joke of his own, and bowed to Richard, and said, "De Carabas, at your service, and you are...?"





Hunter: Janina Gavankar

He turned, and standing there was a tall woman, with long, tawny hair, and skin the color of burnt caramel... She was also, without question, the most beautiful woman Richard had ever seen.

Hunter is extremely deadly, wild-looking, and in one of my favorite descriptive sentences ever, her smile would have stopped a revolution.





Islington: Paul Bettany

And walking toward them, through the candles, was a tall figure, dressed in a simple white robe.

It had golden hair and a pale face. It was not much taller than Richard, but it made him feel like a little child. It was not a man; it was not a woman. It was very beautiful. Its voice was quiet.





Ok, so Paul Bettany is very much a man, not a creature of no gender whatsoever. I don't care. I think he'd be amazing as Islington, at the beginning and also later on with the rage and whatnot.

Jessica: Sophia Myles

Jessica is alternately described as extraordinarily beautiful and about as English as it was possible for any one person to be. She's also extremely bossy.





Anaesthesia: Georgie Henley:

...thin, bedraggled girl in her late teens...

She had a large, water-stained red button pinned to her ragged clothes, the kind that comes attached to birthday cards. It said, in yellow letters, I AM 11.





Lamia: not an actor, but Amy Lee.

She wore silver jewelry, and her dark hair was perfectly coiffed. She was very pale, and her long dress was black velvet.

She had the most amazing eyes, thought Richard. They were the color of foxgloves.





I did not cast Croup and Vandemar because they are creepy and it's not really about the actor's true appearance. Also I would love Bill Nighy to be Lord Portico. It's a really short part but he'd be phenomenal- the single description of Lord Portico's appearance is "patrician".

Also I am using my Neverwhere icon, which noone ever realizes is from the book. It's from the author's preferred text and it's not in the American version, but the passage is:

To say that Richard Mayhew was not very good at heights would be perfectly accurate, but would fail to give the full picture. It would be like describing the planet Jupiter as 'bigger than a duck'. Richard hated clifftops, and high places. Somewhere not far inside him was the fear--the stark, utter, silently screaming terror--that if he got too close to the edge, then something would take over and he would find himself stepping off into space. It was as if he could not entirely trust himself, and that scared Richard more than the simple fear of falling ever could. So he called it vertigo, and hated it and himself, and kept away from high places.

That is a perfect example of why I love Neil Gaiman. My favorite joke ever and a beautiful passage with the phrase "silently screaming terror". And why this is one of my two favorite books.
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