James & Lily casting

[GulPlum]

Sophia and Jo raised interesting points about the casting of James and Lily 
in PS/SS.

To be fair to the movie makers, there is no indication *in canon* about how 
old they are, except that Lupin is described a couple of times as being 
"quite young" despite having some older attributes. "Quite young" is in all 
honestly a meaningless phrase, even (especially?) from the POV of a 13 
year-old. OK, we fans know of the extra-canon detail that Snape (and thus 
the others) are in their mid-30s (presumably in PoA), and the movie-makers 
have access to JKR who would have told them even more (especially as she 
had final say on casting). However, a lot of people watching the movies 
won't be aware of that particular piece of information.

That said, we shouldn't forget that Rickman was *JKR's choice* (i.e. the 
casting director didn't suggest Rickman to her, but she asked them to get 
Rickman involved, which was also the case with Coltrane and Smith, and also 
as I recall, Harris). Rickman is in his mid-fifties, and his Snape makeup 
takes off (IMO) about 6-7, perhaps as much as 10, years off that. The 
result is that Snape appears in the movies to be somewhere in his 
mid-forties. *With JKR's blessing*.

As both Sophia and Jo suggested, the movie-makers had little choice but to 
cast that age group both for the survivors (Sirius, Remus and Peter) and 
for the deceased Potters (though about a decade younger) in order to make 
the PoA revelations believable.

I've bored people here before with my views that they should have cast 
according to Rickman's age, so I won't repeat myself. I'm prepared to 
accept actors who appear to be in their mid-forties in these parts as long 
as they're believable as the characters and all appear to be contemporaries.

As for Lily and James, to date (in book canon as well as the two movies to 
date) they've only appeared in flashbacks or photographs. It therefore 
makes sense that they appear to be in their mid thirties. One thing about 
their casting makes me suspect something in the remaining 3 books' plot 
development. In PS/SS  James was played by a bit-part player about whom we 
know nothing at all beyond his name, Adrian Rawlins (not even his age, 
although I'd have clocked his PS/SS appearance in his mid-30s). Lily, on 
the other hand, was played by Geraldine Somerville, who is absolutely not a 
nobody in Britain (though I accept that she's probably unknown elsewhere). 
She's currently 36, which puts her very much in the right age bracket.

My plot point is that the only reason the producers would have had to cast 
a "name" in the less-than-cameo role of Lily is that she's going to be 
back, with a much bigger part to play (incidentally, ditto re. casting of 
Tom Riddle, played by a clearly non-16 year-old adult). In the books to 
date, James looms large in Harry's thoughts whilst his mother is just sort 
of there in the background - if the production team knew they would have 
plans for James, they would have cast a "name", as they did for the 
remaining seemingly inconsequential roles. I therefore suspect that in 
terms of the series as a whole, we are going to see a lot more of Lily than 
of James.

Incidentally, I suspect that PoA *might* include a flashback further back 
to their schooldays to illustrate the Shrieking Shack revelations. A junior 
Snape would be *very* interesting. ;-)