Who would you cast in the role of Delores Umbridge?

[Caius Marcius]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Fischer, Shari" 
<sfischer at h...> wrote:
> Hi all -
> 
> Normally I lurk, but I would love to know if anyone else has 
thought about
> who should be cast as Delores Umbridge when OotP makes it to the big
> screen!  

She's now beyond the Veil, but an ideal choice IMO would have been 
Madeline Kahn. Kahn was especially skilled in playing dowdy 
overbearing frumps (e.g.,Bogdonavich's What's Up Doc), and listening 
to her recorded performance of the 1996 revivial of Sondheim's Anyone 
Can Whistle  - in which she played the role of the Mayoress Cora 
Hoover-Hooper - shows how inimitably she could play the petty 
dictatorial bureaucrat. Additionally, she had that rather high, 
unexpectedly girlish voice that so startles everyone when they first 
hear Umbridge speak.

AFAIK, Kahn was never cast in a "serious" role, so I don't know how 
well she might have done playing a genuinely evil character like 
Umbridge (as opposed to a merely obnoxiously comical one). Of course, 
it's all beside the point since Kahn is a) dead and - even worse from 
an HP casting perspective b) American.

   - CMC (who won't see OOP on the screen anyway no matter who they 
cast)