#headcasts

I've been agonizing over this ask for days because I'm TERRIBLE at this kind of actor headcast thing.

An example: Sifo-Dyas is easy because I literally can't not picture him as Warren Fu anymore… Warren Fu who... is now predominantly a music video director/producer, not an actor, and historically hates being in front of a camera, so this performance is already running into problems. ALTHOUGH this does present the tantalizing possibility that all of Sifo-Dyas's scenes have the same vibe as Fu's Shakira music videos, so he's dressed really hot and surfing on a pyrotechnic surfboard while he softly sings us the plot.

A couple of shots of June Duprez and C. Aubrey Smith from The Four Feathers for fic reference, as I often headcast Aubrey as Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki (so, yes, he’d be her father-in law). He was such a popular go-to guy whenever you needed a grizzled, powerful old family patriarch, so he fits the part well.

But more than that, it was this that clinched it:

Another reference picspam of Bonita Granville manifesting Laura Erika Barring.

No, I’m not okay with there being 14-year-old swimsuit pinups or deliberately dodgy ”18-year-old ageplaying a little girl in a doll-like costume to entertain creepy old men at a carnival show because her mother is probably a madame” reference photos of her either, thanks for asking.

What the fuck, 1930s/1940s. What the fuck.

!!!!!

Might as well give you guys an updated list of my casting plans for that Old Hollywood version of Dangerous Liaisons I aim to make a gifset of at some point, if possible:

-Marquise de Merteuil: Marlene Dietrich

-Valmont: Conrad Veidt

-Madame de Tourvel: Greta Garbo

-Cecile de Volanges: Bonita Granville

-Mme de Volanges: Gale Sondergaard

-Chevalier Danceny:  Douglas Fairbanks Jr. or Tyrone Power

…I’m an idiot.

Do you know who could be even better for an OH Madame de Tourvel?

The main problem lies in the fragility of the character (even if she is morally strong and such a good person through and through), because so many OH leading ladies were such tough HBICes. The thing with Tourvel is that she should be played by a really skilled actress who can suffer beautifully, suffer and weep in a way that rings profoundly true. But there are so few famous actresses of that era who would be able to convince me of that--so many of them had such a huge core of strength and such a backbone that I wouldn't be able to believe them basically dying of heartbreak. (For instance, when I think of quality OH crying/suffering, I think of Bette, but she is so damn strong on the inside that it always creates a cognitive dissonance in me to see her being victimised, because she was stronger than that. I can imagine her dusting herself off and walking away, whereas de Tourvel just collapses and withers away. Same problem with someone like Viv--she can suffer beautifully but she's way too strong and reserved, IMHO.)

And then I think of the more fragile ladies but they're somehow too girl-like and/or haven't really got that kind of acting skill (or at least never got to show anything in that kind of range on the screen). So often it’s either just epic HBICes or girls who were good at being pretty and fairly ‘normal’ and that was enough. (I love many actresses like that, so I’m not intending that as a slur--glamour doesn’t grow on trees.) But it makes it damn difficult to find someone who is strong in her way, *but* whom you could also see collapsing because of a broken heart.