DH actors

[Carol]

Carol earlier: 
> > Sorry to respond twice to the same post, but I just looked at the photos. What happened to auburn hair and blue eyes? That boy could have played the teenage Snape. I suppose they could give him a wig and contacts, but wouldn't it be easier to find a blue-eyed actor? (Anyone know what color Michael Gambon's eyes are?)
 
Cat Responded:
> 
> It looks like Toby does have blue eyes ... dark blue but blue none the less. Regarding Gambon's eyes ... they are brown.

Carol again:
Yeah. I just watched PoA on ABC Family last night (I wanted to see the HBP preview, which turned out to be a TV spot I'd already seen, but at least it included the deleted scenes), and you're right. He seems to have dark brown eyes. Guess they didn't think it was important to have a blue-eyed actor, which makes me wonder what they'll do about the "bright blue" eye that Harry sees in the broken mirror. How will he recognize the dark brown eye as "Dumbledore's"? DD's eyes should be distinctive in some way, just as Snape's and Harry's are--though "Lily's eyes" are presumably blue like Harry's in the films. We won't see them close up, so the supposed resemblance won't be a problem. But DD and Aberforth need to have virtually identical eyes, and it would have been better in terms of the story (film adapted to book) if Gambon had bright blue, twinkly eyes. (I thought that Toby's eyes looked almost black, but I'll check again. I guess all that matters is that they match Gambon's. I don't see any resemblance, but maybe it's just me.)

Cat wrote: 
> Regarding colourizing actors ... quite a few HP actors dye their hair for their respective parts ... Tom Felton, the Phelps twins... Isaacs and Gambon wear wigs ... and of course Rickman wears a wig and contacts. There are many more examples but those are the ones that immediately come to mind. And of course ... Warwick Davis, he must have the record for the most time spent in the make-up chair!> 

> Now that begs the question....Why didn't they make Gambon wear blue contacts?

Carol responds:
Yes, of course the make-up people can adjust hair color using wigs or dye, and some actors can tolerate contacts if eye color is important. They tried to make Daniel Radcliffe wear green contacts, too, but it didn't work. I was just thinking that it would be harder to make dark hair red than brown hair blond (though, of course, they can always resort to a wig as they did with Rickman, just as they give Gambon a fake beard--with that stupid, hippieish beard tie). Then, again, maybe Toby's hair isn't dark in real life. I saw another photo of him in which it was red, which solves that problem. And I also thought that it would be harder to make dark eyes blue using contacts than the other way around, but since Gambon's are also dark, they match well enough. The problem will be making sure that Aberforth's eyes match DD for the scenes involving the mirror and making Gambon's rather ordinary eyes somehow distinctive. (Maybe Harry will catch a glimpse of gold-rimmed spectacles?)

Cat: 
> I still don't like his characterization of Dumbledore and am even more convinced that Peter O'Toole would have made a better Dumbledore.

Carol:
I've gotten used to Gambon as Dumbledore. He's certainly more energetic than poor old Richard Harris was, and I loved the moment in OoP where he refused to "come quietly" and escaped with Fawkes (even though the scene was altered in other ways). The only scene with Gambon that really bothers me is the one in GoF where he shakes Harry and yells at him for possibly putting his own name in the Goblet of Fire. Dumbledore would not have done that. But scene that could be Steve Kloves's fault or the director's (his name slips my mind) as much as Gambon's. I don't like the costuming for Gambon--Dumbledore's wardrobe should be much more flamboyant and Merlinish--but then I don't like the post-CoS costuming much, anyway. With the exception of McGonagall and DD's robes, it looks early- or mid-twentieth-century instead of medieval. (Snape's costume should look Gothic, IMO, as in Gothic novel--not to be confused with twenty-first-century "Goths." Instead, he looks like a Protestant minister minus the white collar. A few hundred more buttons, but, oh, well. I guess that symbolizes all his repressed emotions.)

But, yes. Peter O'Toole would have had the blue eyes and maybe the right personality for Dumbledore. (I haven't seen him in any recent films.) And if, unlike Gambon, he'd read the books, he might have insisted on a different costume--or better still, a variety of colorful costumes.

Carol, who thinks it was a mistake to produce a series of films that depended in part on as-yet unwritten books and hopes the films will be remade more faithfully in about twenty years