(Sorry about being impolitely anonymous, but I don't have an LJ account and only rarely comment so don't feel like registering.)
Briony is only the narrator in final tenth of the book. For the rest of it she's as much a character as everyone else, and clearly the lead if one lead is to be chosen. But even if you discount her, Robbie and not Cecilia would then become the lead, imo.
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So it's not that you don't want Keira cast as this character. It's that you don't want her cast as any character ever :-). Seeing this is the case debating details about the character of Cecilia is unlikely to lead us anywhere on this question, so I just let that lie.
There are indeed many talented young british actresses and no doubt a fair number of them could do a fine job in this role. (Rachel Weisz is not one of them though. She's just too old. No one would believe her as a virgin in her early twenties.)
The problem, imo, isn't that Keira is capable of getting the odd meaty role. (And it really is only a few. From 2004 to 2006 she'll have been in a total of five movies, playing the lead in only two of them. Romola Garai has eight movies in the same interval. Scarlett Johansson nine.) No, the problem is that most of the good parts are given to foreign "names" in order to secure financing (I assume).
Notice how they recently passed over Hayley Atwell for Scarlett in The Other Boleyn Girl. That would have been a great chance for Hayley and they already had an american (Portman) in the other large female role. And the film is even partly financed by the BBC. But no, it didn't happen. This very English story will not have a single British actor in any of the major roles.
So don't think that if Keira wasn't there it would automatically benefit some other young Brit. Who were the leads in Emma, Bridget Jones, Vanity Fair, Shakespeare in Love and who will be in the movies I mention in my earlier comment?
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Briony is only the narrator in final tenth of the book. For the rest of it she's as much a character as everyone else, and clearly the lead if one lead is to be chosen. But even if you discount her, Robbie and not Cecilia would then become the lead, imo.
...
So it's not that you don't want Keira cast as this character. It's that you don't want her cast as any character ever :-). Seeing this is the case debating details about the character of Cecilia is unlikely to lead us anywhere on this question, so I just let that lie.
There are indeed many talented young british actresses and no doubt a fair number of them could do a fine job in this role. (Rachel Weisz is not one of them though. She's just too old. No one would believe her as a virgin in her early twenties.)
The problem, imo, isn't that Keira is capable of getting the odd meaty role. (And it really is only a few. From 2004 to 2006 she'll have been in a total of five movies, playing the lead in only two of them. Romola Garai has eight movies in the same interval. Scarlett Johansson nine.)
No, the problem is that most of the good parts are given to foreign "names" in order to secure financing (I assume).
Notice how they recently passed over Hayley Atwell for Scarlett in The Other Boleyn Girl. That would have been a great chance for Hayley and they already had an american (Portman) in the other large female role. And the film is even partly financed by the BBC. But no, it didn't happen. This very English story will not have a single British actor in any of the major roles.
So don't think that if Keira wasn't there it would automatically benefit some other young Brit. Who were the leads in Emma, Bridget Jones, Vanity Fair, Shakespeare in Love and who will be in the movies I mention in my earlier comment?