A thread from earlier today by member @simontemplar got me thinking about movies and television, and why and how casting decisions are made. Often for money, I suppose. And vanity. And to score political points.

Although ST’s thread about the latest Jack Reacher movie was about its deficiencies of plot, my comment on it was more about its deficiencies in casting, and how inapt I thought it was that Tom Cruise (5’7″) should play Jack Reacher (6’5″). This put me in mind of other spectacularly bad casting decisions, and which one might just be the worst ever? Cruise as Reacher is certainly in the top three, IMHO. But I’d also nominate Kevin Costner’s turn as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (or as pretty much anything else, really). Bad as he is in POT, that movie does have some redeeming qualities (a lovely one at the very end, anyway) and Alan Rickman’s performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham is wondrous.

Then there are those casting decisions which cause consternation to begin with, but which end up being so sublimely “right” that we cannot imagine any other actor in the role. I remember an interview with Bernard Cornwell, author of the “Sharpe” series, in which he expressed his initial unhappiness with Sean Bean’s being cast in the role for the ITV serializations of his novels. Sharpe, you see, was clearly described in Cornwell’s first few books (which I do love) as having very dark, even black, hair; Sean Bean’s hair is of a decidedly blonder shade.

Then, Cornwell watched the first Sharpe episode on television.

“After that,” he said, “I never mentioned the color of Richard Sharpe’s hair again.”

What casting decisions resonate with you, for good, or for ill?

PS:  I’ve always had mixed feelings about Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn. Is it just me?