Your favorite actor/actress in HP movies

[potioncat]

> zanooda wrote:
> > Oh, Rickman is wonderful, yes :-). However, I just can't get over
> the fact that he is way too old for this role ;-(. I know that it
> doesn't matter for most people, but to me it does, unfortunately. 
> > 
> > For me, one of the greatest appeals of the Marauders' (plus Lily 
and
> Snape :-)) story is that it is about such young people, who lost 
> their lives so early. Think about it, Snape is less than forty when 
he
> dies (and so is Lupin, who dies the same day) - just a boy in my 
> view, LOL! Sirius was even younger when he died, and Lily and James
> were simply kids ;-(! 
> > 
> > So when a 60-year old plays Snape, it *does* seem old compared to
> the  books (same goes for Gary oldman).

Potioncat:
Movies are made for the younger crowd--well, younger than me anyway---
So I'm going to quote part of Carol's post from a few days ago, "To a 
fourteen-year-old, all "old people" look alike!" That was from my 14-
year-old's comment that HBP!DD looks like movie!Sirius. While it 
stings that Sirius might be considered "old" the ages of the actors 
won't bother the younger audience.

But I agree, it's hard to think of Rickman!Snape and Lily. Or hard to 
think of Rickman!Snape as the same generation at all to Harry's 
parents. On the other hand, Hollywood almost always casts actors who 
are older than their parts. (And actresses who are younger.) 


 
> 
> Carol responds:
> I agree with you. Of course, the casting director and whoever else 
is
> responsible for such decisions didn't know that the Snape of SS/PS 
was
> only 31 or 32, in effect, twenty years older than Harry. JKR didn't
> give that information til right after GOF (the book) came out, IIRC.
> By that time, Rickman was well-established as Movie!Snape and the 
fans
> would have been very upset if the casting had been changed (not that
> WB would have considered it). 

Potioncat:
I don't know how much authority JKR had over the movies. I've seen 
interviews that indicate she approved everything and interviews that 
said she had nothing to do with casting. But you would think she 
would told them how old the characters should be. Then again, that's 
maths.

>Carol: 
snip
In spite of that, I remember being surprised when JKR
> said that Snape (as of GoF) was only 34 or 35. I thought of him,
> somehow, as being in his forties. At that point, I realized that
> Rickman was much too old to play Snape, but also that it was too 
late
> to change. snip

Potioncat:
I was stunned at the canon ages. Not based on the movies, but based 
on what I thought from reading. Also, I thought the marriage age in 
Britain was traditionally a little older than in the US. So canon 
Lily and James seem very, very young to me. 

I've lost track of how long the movies have been out. So even if they 
had started with the right ages, everyone would have aged up a bit. 
Of course that's just as true with the kids.

> Carol:
> OTOH, I thought right away that the people cast as James and Lily 
were
> the wrong age, far too old to be the parents of one-year-old Harry.
> They look like the parents of an eleven-year-old or even a teenager,
> not of a baby.

Potioncat:
Do you mean from SS/PS in the mirror? They looked right to me at the 
time. I haven't thought of it since. Of course, I'm coming from the 
PoV of a long line of old first-time-parents. 

James looked a bit dorky to have been a Quidditch hero, even if we 
didn't know his other reputations at the time.


>Carol: 
snip I guess they wanted someone who could pass as Snape's
> contemporary, which meant that they had to cast someone older than
> Blsck would be in the books. for
 David Thewlis is a little closer to the right age but he never
> looked like Lupin to me. 

Potioncat:
I recall reading an interview that said they were casting closer to 
Rickman's age. Close is fairly relative, I suppose. But it seems 
there's about a 15 year gap from the youngest of them to Rickman. I 
wonder how it feels to actors who are not so close in age, to be 
portraying characters who are the same age? They do it all the time.


 
> Carol:
 Completely out of character. The students
> may fear that he'll turn them into something unnatural (to 
paraphrase
> Sam in LOTR) or give them a most unpleasant detention or treat them 
to
> some embarrassing sarcasem, but he would never hit them with a book 
or
> anything else. As you say, he doesn't need to.

Potioncat:
Make that 3 of us. I guess that was quicker than showing the 
detentions. If he had hissed "detention, 6 PM, gutting a barrell of 
toads"...it would have given everyone goosebumps and been closer to 
character. So, Carol, I think they were going for the slapstick. I 
liked the scene better in PoA when Snape magicks Ron's book to the 
right page. 


> 
> zanooda: 
> > I realize of course that it's not the actor's fault - he just does
> what the director tells him. And once again, Rickman is a wonderful,
> wonderful actor - always liked him! And he certainly does what is 
> humanly possible to bring Snape alive, which is not easy, 
considering
> how little screen time he gets!

Potioncat:
He does, doesn't he? Rickman is very good at that. He did talk about 
being about 20 years too old for the "Bottle Shock" character. But in 
that case the age wasn't important (except maybe to the real person.)

I hope he'll talk about HP after the movies are done. I think it's 
very cool that he won't discuss them now.

Going back to Zanooda's point at beginning of this post, in canon, it 
was the young who fought and died in both LV wars. That will be lost 
in the movies.