In your opinion, which roles were miscast?

[Lonoxo]

I’ll start off with musicals:

Russell Crowe in Les Miserables
Piers Brosnan in Mamma Mia

I don’t think their singing was strong enough. There were enough star names so I wished the producers had been braver and cast unknowns who could act and sing.

@LadyEloise

Tom Hanks in Bonfire of the Vanities.

And Melanie Griffith as his character's mistress. I loved the book and was wtf at the casting of these two

Young Lily Potter, she was supposed to have green eyes but hers were brown - very small but important and spoilt the film for me.

So did Harry.

The Superman films with Christopher Reeve the baby playing him as a baby has the wrong eye colour.

Tom Cruise in anything after Risky Business.

Lily James in the Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Society.

Stephen Graham in The White House Murders for his appalling welsh accent.

Agree with Tim Cruise as Reacher.

Also James McAvoy as Bill Denborough in the new IT. TBF a few of the older losers are a bit off, to me, but he is jarringly wrong.

@sashh in which case they should have been blue (like the adult who played Lily Potter) not brown.

I think a lot of the HP cast weren't so much miscast as misdirected. It's painfully apparent that none of the adult actors bothered reading the books, where their characters are very vividly cast (especially egregious in the case of Michael Gambon who got it so wrong he's an actual meme), and they managed to go through three separate directors who somehow didn't "get" Harry Potter before they found Yates, so couldn't get a decent performance out of them. The one that really gets me is Richard Griffiths. Vernon is supposed to be an uncontrollable apoplectic ball of barely contained rage, and in the only scene where he's supposed to showcase that (in The Order of the Phoenix), RG barely manages mile consternation. He should have been screaming and spitting and purple in the face like Miss Trunchbull.

Also I agree, the whole damn reveal hinges on the "you have your mother's eyes" line, and they take care to pepper it through the whole franchise, and then can't even find a child with a passing similarity to DR in the eye department to make it make sense, or even adjust them in post production. It's frankly bizarre.

TV

Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike

Most voice actors in the ‘live’ action Lion King, why the hell does an African lion need to have Beyonce an American voicing her?

I think HP was miscast as a whole. I think they went for big-name adults over actually appropriate ones and the children, with a few exceptions, were woeful (I did like Tom Felton a lot).

It's such a shame because they could have found some really wonderful talent - especially lesser-known adults - but just... didn't. Alan Rickman as Snape is a case in point. He's a fantastic actor, but he's twenty years too old and about five stone too heavy to play 30-something, lanky, sallow, unhealthy-looking Snape.

Has anyone said Michael Fassbender as Mr Rochester? HE is supposed to be UGLY for fuck's sake!!

Renee Zelwegger as Bridget Jones.
I will never understand what kind of thinking could conceivably put an American in that intrinsically English role

Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name.

The character's supposed to be 24. But Hammer was 30 when it was filmed, and looked it (if not a bit older). Which makes the whole thing look like a man in his 30s chasing after a teenage boy. Gave me the squicks.

I heard (not sure if it's true) that Snape was supposed to be Tim Roth..who would've been fantastic...but he turned it down to do Planet Of The Apes.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin was such an important book for me and the film is sooo bad. Nicholas Cage yes, but Penelope Cruz too and where was Carlo?

I know ET was too old to be Elinor, but I love that film soooo much.

They've done a new Rebecca with Lily James and Armie Hammer that is making me clench up just thinking about it.

Agree with PPs, Keira Knightley in anything except Bend it Like Beckham. Anna Karenina was where she really hit rock bottom.

Hugo Weaving as Elrond. My dad said he spent the whole Rivendell section of Fellowship waiting for him to open one side of his robe and ask if anybody wanted to buy a watch...

He just overdid it, and came off sort of sleazy (though the seriously odd hairstyle didn't help), and then really hammed it up in Return of the King.

Agree that Timothy Chalomet was miscast as Laurie, especially with Florence Pugh as Amy, just didn’t work. Christian Bale was a much better match for the role.

Disagree about Renee Z as Bridget Jones, liked her in the role.

@AristotleAteMyHamster
Totally agree, I was outraged when he was cast, everything about Jack Reacher was massive, hands, width, height. Tom Cruise wtf??

I'll also add Euan McGregor in The Phantom Menace, out of his depth.

Jamie Bell in Billy Elliott, his acting is so unbelievable, almost see through!

I do like Johnny Depp in WW. Right kind of madness.

I watched a version of Wuthering Heights with Robert Cavanagh as Heathcliffe. Admittedly, Wuthering Heights is a really tough one to film because it spans two or three decades, with Cathy and Heathcliffe being around the same age, but with Cathy dying when she's only about 20 whereas Heathcliffe kicks the bucket at about 40. Most adaptations seem to just go with actors in their late 20s or early 30s, which is a bit jarring when they're frolicking about as teenagers on the moors.
This adaptation though just struck me as really ridiculous because Heathcliffe really looked about 40 - they aged him up if anything - and there he was skipping about the moors with Cathy and acting like a teenage hooligan at the Lintons' house. Really weird.

Very unpopular opinion but I liked Keira Knightley in P and P. Only film I've really rated her in.

Brad Pitt in Ad Astra. I love Brad Pitt, love sci fi but what a boring drone of a film. Brad Pitt was so dull.
I watched it the other day. Waste of time.

Whoever played Mr Collins in the Keira Knightley version of "Pride and Prejudice." He played Mr Collins as this little short man who was inept but endearing. Mr Collins was supposed to be on the tall side and thoroughly obnoxious and just a tad malevolent. You are not supposed to feel sorry for him!

[quote Gubbeen]@DelphiniumBlue, I thought that one of the very few merits of the Keira Knightley P and P was casting the much more obviously pretty Rosamund Pike as Jane.[/quote]
Mmm, yes she is pretty, but still strapping, and although she was about 26 when she played Jane, I did think she came across as a little too old for the role. I know I'm being picky. Jane is supposed to be very nice and kind, but a bit submissive, especially compared to Lizzy.Which is why strapping doesn't work for me. Although of course one can be both tall and an "obedient" daughter.

Jamie Bell in Billy Elliott, his acting is so unbelievable, almost see through!

I thought he was outstanding!

Hated Steven Graham in White House Farm, my toes were curling at his accent. Liked RZ in Bridget Jones, hated Andie McDowell in 4 weddings. I thought James Norton was great in Happy Valley and weird that Jamie Dornan was sexier as serial killer than in 50 shades.