Guest cast for Dance With The Devil:
Anita Cortés: Anaïs Nin (she and her brief career as a psychoanalyst and her anxious repression of her own bisexuality inspired Anita)
Robert āRobbieā Stirling: Tom Hiddleston in innocent Classicist posh boy mode. So innocent he basically doesnāt realise he responds to men as well as women until Torsten Barring happens.
Sir Cyril Smythe: Claude motherfucking Rains in evil aristocratic bastard mode. Hollenius was a big inspiration, as some of you may have noticed. Heās not the exact same guy, however; Smythe is even worse and possesses no genius, just money. His evilness is not motivated by sexual jealousy, either; heās just a sadistic, megalomaniac psycho through and through.
Acheron: Anthony Ainley (shut up) complete with Master beard (except slightly more muscular and hairy in this incarnation, so imagine he just hit the gym or something) and also in evil aristocratic bastard mode.
Birgitte: Jean Harlow at her most tragic. Birgitteās IQ is closer to her shoe size, however.
I havenāt got a fixed face for Laura, so you can imagine whichever jailbait-seeming evil curvaceous blonde you wish. Fuckit, that was 2014. Somewhere between the second and third fics, I happened to discover this highly intelligent, precocious baby vamp of an actress from the exact same era who was more perfect than I could ever have imagined: Bonita Granville. She specialised in playing spoiled, even outright evil children, and nabbed an Oscar nomination for a harrowingly, astonishingly malicious little girl in These Three (she was just 12 years old at the time of filming, outperforming all the grown-ups; she really was robbed of that Oscar). Itās in 1938ā²s The Beloved Bratāan hour-long āfamilyā movie that was, in fact, shockingly dark for its themesāthat she was at her Lauramost, to the point where Iām still pinching myself at how such a perfect match could ever even have existed. Itās in the public domain and you can grab it here. She also played Nancy Drewābut itāll tell you something about her āedgeā that even this shot of her as Nancy looks somehow sinister:
More Lauraesque pictures of her here and here.
OTOH, no harm done if you can think of another actress who fits her while reading. Itās not like I can stop you! You can imagine whoever the hell you want as these people, really; whatever gets you off.
Torsten Barring is, forever and always, 100%, the 1941 original as portrayed by Conrad Veidt.