The Casting Couch: Mr. Rochester

In an attempt to revive the blog: new feature! I don’t like posting all the inane casting news here, but sometimes it does spark my imagination. So in this feature, I’ll try to cast roles that haven’t been announced yet. These aren’t people I think will get the role, but people who I think would be an interesting choice. And I’ll try not to pick too similar options.

To start with, it was announced last week that Ellen Page is going to play Jane Eyre in the nth film version of that great example of gothic literature. A Mr. Rochester, however, hasn’t been found that. While I don’t really see the need for yet another version (I think the Joan Fontaine/Orson Welles one is pretty good, to no-one’s surprise, and I rather liked the miniseries the BBC made two years ago), Mr. Rochester is a great character, and as Ellen Page will probably give a more modern interpretation of mousy Jane, who will be the dark broody master she falls for.

Mt top suggestion is without a question Richard Armitage. He plays Guy of Gisborne, henchmen to the Sheriff of Nottingham in the new BBC Robin Hood series, and he’s great: glowering, broody, conflicted, hopelessly in love with Maid Marian and making every female viewer eager to redeem him, despite his evil deeds. If that weren’t enough, I recently saw the miniseries North and South, where he plays a Darcy-esque character to the hilt: he’s haughty, superior, but it doesn’t take that much to breach his armor and making him wholly dependent on the woman who managed to do it.

But I also have some less predictable choices…see for yourself, after the jump.