AR has read the books, well, at least DH!

[dumbledore11214]

Carol:
<SNIP>
> Good directors do listen to the actors, especially highly gifted veteran actors who understand their character and his or her motivation. (They even gave Jason Isaacs a snake-headed cane at his request because he thought it fit the character even though that wasn't in the book.) I agree that Book!Snape would never have hit students on the head with books; he wouldn't have needed to. But Rickman seems to have enjoyed the chance to get in a bit of physical comedy--and Film!Snape probably enjoyed the chance to take out a bit of his frustration on Potter and Weasley (just as film!Hermione hits Ron with a book in HBP). But that scene doesn't seriously undermine Snape as a character (unlike Dumbledore yelling at and shaking Harry, which Gambon would have known was contrary to DD's character had he read the books. 
> 
> The thing is, WB is trying, in general, to produce an adaptation that's faithful to the spirit of the books, which requires the characters, especially the important characters, to share the personality and motivation (and preferably, mannerisms, accents, vocal inflections, and facial expressions) of their book equivalents. The Disney version of "Three Musketeers" that you cited had no such goal. It was meant only as light entertainment, so loosely based on the books that the author would not have recognized his own characters.
> 
> Consider for a moment the performances of Christopher Lee, who played Saruman in the LOTR films, and John Noble, who played Denethor. Lee read the books multiple times (and had no qualms about talking to Peter Jackson about how he thought a scene should be played). John Noble never so much as read the scenes involving Denethor. Lee was, IMO, spot on in his characterization. Noble was sickeningly off, completely missing the proud and tough old warrior who wrongly thought himself a match for Sauron. Part of it was the way his scenes were written (those grapes; his death) but part was his (IMO) complete misunderstanding of the character--because he'd never read the books. I think he might have requested--and received--some alterations had he done so. (Jackson and his team were willing to experiment. They filmed several variations of the scene with Frodo and Gollum on the Cracks of Doom, including one that matched the book, and chose the one they thought worked best dramatically--unfortunate choice, IMO, but at least the actors knew that it wasn't the canonical version and were part of the creative process of changing the book to the film.)
<SNIP>


Alla:

Yeah, I know Jackson and LOTR is one of the two exceptions which I was thinking about. Jackson specifically wanted to produce the work as close as possible to the books and their spirit and yes many actors read the books and yes indeed he would even listen to them.

Are you aware of any other examples?

And no, I do not think that giving Jackson Isaac a cane counts, at least this is not what I was thinking about. I was thinking about director changing a *scene* per actor's request, not giving actor an accessory that he wanted.

In one of the russian miniseries that I recently watched I have read that one of the actors picked a kipa (spelling?) that he felt suited the spirit of his character and of course he was allowed, but it is not like he asked to change his dialog, etc.

Alla