Casting

[vincentjh]

Amanda wrote

> The person I feel would best bring Cedric to life is Herny 
Cavill. When I saw a picture of him, after someone on here suggested 
him, he just screamed Cedric Diggory to me. He fits my mental image 
of him to a T. Mind you I am not sure of how tall he is, but he 
definately has the handsome boy-next door look to him.

VJH:
According to the usually unreliable IMBD, Cavill is 6'1. But I doubt 
it. He's considerably shorter than "Monte Cristo" co-star Jim 
Caviezel, who's listed at 6'2. Since Caviezel used to be a basketball 
player and is more on the tall side, I'm guessing Cavill is probably 
around 6ish or slightly shorter. Not tall, but not exactly short. 

I often picture Cedric as around avarage height and a bit muscular, 
but not the basketball or American football player type. After all, 
he's a seeker and seekers usually aren't tall or buff. But Steve does 
have a point in saying that whoever plays Cedric should clearly look 
older than Dan and be taller than him. I would think Cavill looks old 
enough. The question, then, would be how tall Dan is now.

Steve asked:

> When they decided or as someone implied JKR insisted on an all 
British cast, was that meant literally, or was it indended to mean 
the characters have to be from or related to the country of origin 
for the charaters they are playing?

> Does Victor Krum have to come from a short list of young British 
actors,  or does the 'all British' rule imply that Victor has to be 
an actor from Bulgaria (Germany, Austria, eastern Europe, Russia), 
and Fleur Delacour has to be from France? 

> And Cho Chang, does she have to be British, or simply Asian, 
persumably Chinese?

> Then I must ask what qualifies as British? Canada? Australia? New 
Zealand? These are or were a part of the British Empire at one time.

VJH:
My guess is (again, it's pure speculation) that non-British 
characters would probably be played by actors from the characters' 
orgins. Fake accents are usually painful to listen to. And I really 
doubt young actors (playing Krum and Fluer) can pull them off. (When 
watching the Joy Luck Club, I got so distracted by those phony 
accents, bad Chinese, and worst of all, lousy imitation of "bad 
English" that I couldn't at all enjoy it. Since the director is a 
Cantonese speaker, he probably didn't realize that those actresses 
playing the older generation in flashbacks speak mostly fluent 
Mandarin but those playing the same characters in present have 
Cantaonese accent instead. Urr!) So just to spare us the pain, the 
film makers should simply go for the actors with the right accents 
and demeanors naturally. 

Cho Chang can be a Chinese name or Korean name. Whatever her acestory 
is, I'd like to see her played by an Asian Brit. There're plenty of 
them. And I'm sure many of them are dying to see an Asian female 
character on screen who 1) isn't a high-kicking Kong Fu girl, 2) has 
her clothes on, and 3) speaks English.

VJH,