Casting; ages; accents

[Hillman, Lee]

No: HPFGUIDX 12309

Hi, everyone!
 
Since I get the digest, I'm chiming in late (as usual).
 
First: to the casting of characters, relative ages, etc.
 
Hugh Laurie as Arthur: Yes! Yes! Yes! This is perfect. Someone asked if he
played the cop in the Borrowers. I haven't seen it, but if you saw the
recent filming of Stuart Little, he played the father, and he was the grumpy
husband of the overly talkative niece in Sense and Sensibility (in which he
was wasted, IMO).
 
Of the choices we've discussed so far, Daniel Day-Lewis seems the best for
Sirius. I have no strong opinions about most of the others. Perhaps we need
some new faces.
 
As to relative ages, I have a question about the JKR interview: She said
that Dumbledore is 150, and that McGonagall is 70--but did she actually SAY
that wizards have longer lifespans? I assumed that Dumbledore's advanced age
has to do with working with Nick Flaumel on the Philospher's Stone, not with
any natural tendency to live longer.
 
Also, related to that issue, we know that Minerva has been teaching since
the Marauders began school. Why? Because we are told in PoA that Dumbledore
became Headmaster the year Remus started at Hogwarts, making it possible for
him to attend. And we are told by Tom Riddle's diary in CoS that Dumbledore
taught Transfiguration. They didn't need two Transfiguration teachers, so
McGonagall must have been hired to replace Dumbledore when he became
Headmaster and stopped actively teaching. So she's been teaching for about
25 years.
 
We are told in PoA and GoF that Lupin and Black both appear to be in their
mid-thirties. This makes sense if one considers that the kids are around 14
at this time (relative to their birthdays), and that James and Lily were
young when they had Harry. (They can't be much younger than that, or Lily
would have had Harry when she was only 18 or so. I think they started early,
but not quite that early.) Snape is the same age because they were all in
the same year, according to Lupin. However, whomever said that they've all
had some tough lives is quite right: they're all bound to appear a little
older than they are. It's not even necessary to have been through a great
deal of stress: I have a friend who began going grey at the temples by the
time he was 24.
 
A final comment about American actors and British accents: I must take
exception to this remark. Kevin effing Costner aside, I am a professional
actor, I am an American, and I can do a number of British dialects. Maybe
not 100% perfectly, but in point of fact, it took two Exchange Student
friends in high school--one English (Simon) and one Scottish (Malcolm) to
teach me NOT to pick up other people's accents. It can be learned--just like
British actors (such as Jeremy Irons, Alan Rickman, and even Cary Elwes) can
learn to speak with an American accent. So there! ;^P
 
Gwen