Casting Dorian Gray

Staff Writer: Grave Digger

Barnaby Thompson talks about how the adaptation was cast. What he looked for in an actor. Ever wonder why people get the parts they do? An interesting read for fans as well as actors.

Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a literary classic and anyone who has read the novel, has an image in their mind’s eye on what Dorian looks like, “Everybody has their own idea of perfection” notes director Oliver Parker.

This could have posed an almost impossible task in the casting process but Parker took the view that times change and that “If one was to choose the most glamorous man of the age today, he would be very different from when the book was written”.

Enter British actor Ben Barnes. Producer Barnaby Thompson had previously cast Barnes in Ealing Studio’s Easy Virtue and it was on the set of that film that he looked at the young actor as a possible Dorian, having arrived at the location straight from a script meeting on Dorian Gray. “I became aware of Ben’s interesting dark eyes and there was a moment when he turned to camera slightly and I found myself thinking ‘Oh my God he’s Dorian’. As a result, Thompson introduced Barnes to Oliver Parker and the two spent a couple of days working together. “I gave him a fairly rigorous audition, which he passed with flying colours. I became very excited about what he could bring to Dorian”.

“I think Ben’s done a great job; he has matinee idol looks, he’s utterly charming, but he can go from sweet charm to steel in just a flick of the head. This role is a real challenge: he starts as gawky naïve, he becomes rock ‘n’ roll superstar and then has to play himself looking exactly the same 25 years later and he’s done all those three things with aplomb” praises Thompson.

Parker and British actor Colin Firth are no strangers to collaboration, having worked together three times previously. “I think he’s becoming more and more exciting as an actor” notes Parker. “He keeps moving forward in an almost relentless way, looking for new ways to challenge himself. Henry Wotton is a fabulous role for him and not necessarily an obvious one considering the way people perceive Colin. But I actually know he’s a dark bastard at heart with evil thoughts so it was an easy choice in the end!”

Producer Barnaby Thomson’s thoughts echo those of Parker, “Colin saw an opportunity to play a character he rarely gets to play. In a curious way if there’s a similar role he’s played it would be Valmont, where he had this real sparkle and sense of the Machiavellian and he gets to be the bad guy. Very often Colin is cast as Mr Reliable and anyone who knows him knows he is anything but!”

Source: Momentum Pictures