Do you mentally cast your stories with movie stars when you write them? If so, who?

[WendyTrilby]

Have you ever found yourself mentally casting your story as you write it? Do you envision a specific actor who would perfectly embody a character if your story were to be adapted into a movie? I'm curious: what factors influence your casting choices?

I realized that I do this all the time, either consciously or unconsciously. It does help me flesh out the characters, as I can use that actor's range as guard rails as I write. I will also confess that my male leads might be heavily influenced by my fantasies.

Portmanteau: No Sleep Till Brooklyn (a brand new story that just dropped) - The role of a young chef who becomes the object of desire for several women. I cast Jeremy Allen White, who currently stars in The Bear and played Lip on Shameless. This was an easy connection since he plays a chef in The Bear, so I’m fairly sure how I was influenced. In the role of Rella, a repressed Orthodox Jewish woman in her early 40s, I imagined a young Ann Bancroft. She was 36 when she played Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. They aged her up, but Ann at 36 would be perfect.

Portmanteau: Gone Hollywood - The role of Jackson Tibbetts, the hot Hollywood movie star who falls in love with a grocery store clerk. I cast Timothy Oliphant, who you might know from Justified or Deadwood. He usually plays stoic, slow-burn characters, but I based this on what he might be like in real life.

Portmanteau: More Than a Feeling - The role of Mayla, a former model who relocates to Boston to write novels and falls for her publisher. I looked back a few years to Lauren Hutton, the actress/model who played opposite Richard Gere in American Gigolo .

I've mentally cast several more of my characters, but I'm excited to hear about your experiences. Who are some of the actors who have inhabited your stories, either intentionally or unintentionally?

 

[SimonDoom]

No, but I do model some of my characters in my mind on women I've known in real life or women I've seen on erotic websites. I can't think of a mainstream actress who's been a model for a character of mine.

By the way, the actress who played Hot Lips in the MASH film was Sally Kellerman, not Lauren Hutton. Loretta Swit played her in the TV show.

 

[MrPixel]

I don't, to answer the question directly. I have no patience for celebrity culture, and had a little bit of direct exposure to the Hollywood social scene. It was not good, he understates.

I visualize my characters on my own. Rarely I might surf the net for images that fit what's in my mind, and infrequently hit on an example, "OMG, that's her!" But starting with a known IRL person, celebrity or otherwise? No. 'Cept my wife. She's humored by it.

Here's one. In my head was a young female golf pro, a stunner that was sought after as a trophy. Like I said, "OMG, that's her!":

 

[OffNSFW]

I guess I never thought about it like that. I'm thinking I've imagined celebrities in the role of my characters on a couple occasions, more for their visual archetypes than anything else. But I'm more likely to imagine people I personally know.

 

[AchtungNight]

I write fanfic frequently, so yeah. Sometimes I cast original characters with famous actors also, though the roles aren’t set in stone. I do have the celebrities impersonated poorly also sometimes. Lisa’s wanton personality has served as the base for how I portray many female celebrities, thus her in-joke about always being a stunt double or understudy, never a lead… until I decided to put her onscreen as herself.

 

[lovecraft68]

Being I can't stomach most of Hollywood, especially the 'men' the answer is no.

I've occasionally pictured a porn star as a place holder of sorts, but not really any of the TMZ sleaze.

 

[StillStunned]

Usually I don't. The one exception that I can think of is Mel, the protagonist's girlfriend in my Flesh for Fantasy series. These are stories where the visual aspect is important, so to paint a consistent picture I imagine her as Mel B from the Spice Girls.

OK, not Hollywood. Still.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Never. I have a better imagination than that.

 

[lovecraft68]

I do have to confess that the only woman I have definitively seen as one of my characters is Sherry Moon Zombie who I could see in a movie version of my female serial killer novel Every Dog Has its Day. If you've ever seen her in the movies House of a 1000 corpses or Devil's Rejects, she is hot, but absolutely batshit crazy. Of course I'm thinking of her from ten or more years ago, she's getting a bit old for the role now. But she'd be perfect.

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

I would almost say that I do, but it does feel weird when I imagine all my character's speaking with mid-20th century Transatlantic Accents.

Katharine Hepburn would make an interesting Brittany Kohl, though.

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

No, I just make them up from nothing in my head and then it would feel strange to cast actors or actresses in their place, especially as their physical attributes might not be similar.

As others have said, though, occasionally I use inspiration from real life people but generally I change their appearance and personality to fit something I personally prefer.

 

[WendyTrilby]

No, but I do model some of my characters in my mind on women I've known in real life or women I've seen on erotic websites. I can't think of a mainstream actress who's been a model for a character of mine.

By the way, the actress who played Hot Lips in the MASH film was Sally Kellerman, not Lauren Hutton. Loretta Swit played her in the TV show.

Sally Kellerman! Of course. Thanks for catching that. They had a similar look (tall lean), but it was Hutton I was thinking about, but not from MASH.

 

[SimonDoom]

Sally Kellerman! Of course. Thanks for catching that. They had a similar look (tall lean), but it was Hutton I was thinking about, but not from MASH.

No one can blame you for thinking about Lauren Hutton.

 

[Voboy]

Never. There are times when I think of my characters as real people I've met, but not movie stars. More often, I just make up a "look" in my mind.

But to be honest, for the last few years, there have often been times that I've not thought about what my characters look like much at all. No mental image. I now realize I almost never have a mental image of my narrator.

There have been times, though very few, when I've wondered who'd be cast in the movie version of whatever story I was writing. But the story was usually almost done by the time I pondered that.

 

[KeithD]

A few on rare occasion--and other celebrities too, mostly literary--but that's usually when I'm writing something parallel to stories about them directly. I just finished evoking Tennessee Williams in a story. And I've written parallels to Rock Hudson, Hemingway, and Gore Vidal that I can remember.

 

[Britva415]

Do you mentally cast your stories with movie stars when you write them?

Not me

 

[MelissaBaby]

Portmanteau: Gone Hollywood - The role of Jackson Tibbetts, the hot Hollywood movie star who falls in love with a grocery store clerk. I cast Timothy Oliphant, who you might know from Justified or Deadwood. He usually plays stoic, slow-burn characters, but I based this on what he might be like in real life.

In my series Mary and Alvin, my original vision of Alvin was based on "Justified" Timothy Oliphant, and his lovable but irresponsible, underacheiving brother on "Santa Clarita Diet" Timothy Oliphant.

Mary is pretty blatantly Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and the series has numerous Easter Eggs referring to her movie and TV roles.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Not me

I did so fairly consistently when I started writing, but over time have done so less and less. I think of the celebrity casting as training wheels that I eventually didn't need.

I do have a friend who like to cast my characters in his imagination as he reads. Sometimes he surprises me with his choices, but often his casting seems perfect, such as Kaitlyn Dever as Kitty in Queen of the Roller Derby.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

My MC Rachel, in my story Wölfin is Felicity Jones. Not the look per se, but the persona, if that makes sense?

 

[ElectricBlue]

My characters are mostly inspired by someone I've known over the years, or know now, or briefly met in the street, on the bus, my favourite cafe. So they're real people: my mind or memory is always enough.

If a character is completely fictional, I'll often come across a photo and think, "That looks like her," and keep a gallery. Never movie stars or celebrities though. My Kindle fucks up with Tumblr nowadays, so I don't do that so much now - most of the gallery came from Tumblr, self-portrait artists, usually.

When people mention current day celebs and actors, I rarely know who they're on about, so that's a meaningless reference to me. It surprises me how many folk expect us to know what their favourite crush looks like.

I asked someone who knows my writing to find a photo she thought a character looked like. I was surprised how spot on she was, which pleased me - because I'm not a writer who does a visual paragraph dump, but I do portray a character's physicality over the course of a story.

 

[XerXesXu]

My characters are mostly inspired by someone I've known over the years, or know now, or briefly met in the street, on the bus, my favourite cafe. So they're real people: my mind or memory is always enough.

I'm 'real person' based, also. I've seen very few movies and that was long ago. Usually, it's something about their demeanour or character, approach to life, behaviour rather than appearance. I can give them any appearance I want, though I go very light on description of physical appearance; readers can fill in the deficit to suit their preference for the character.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I usually find myself going the other direction. I'll have created the character then later I'll see a picture of someone, or in real life and think, Yeah, that's her, that's Layla.

 

[RetroFan]

Strangely enough, I was thinking about this question just yesterday.

I have done this in some of my stories, like 'Tonya, Tiffany and the Twins' which was set in 1989. The grumpy husband/father Henry goes to New York for a work training course at the bank's head office, and ends up in hospital after bending over in front of a ram (obviously not knowing it was there) with the angry sheep butting him into a lake, with Henry suffering a heart attack, needing to have his stomach pumped out after swallowing foul lake water and not to mention terrible bruising to his buttocks. In the hospital, he encounters two doctors; one a stern, humourless African-American man, and the other slightly younger man of Italian-American heritage, who leads a group of medical students around and makes no end of corny jokes about Henry's predicament. When I was writing these scenes I always imagined the African-American doctor played by Reginald VelJohnson who played Carl Winslow in Family Matters; and the Italian-American doctor played by Tony Danza, who at this time was in 'Who's The Boss'.

In 'Banging Cousin In Blackpool' which is set in 1955, I imagine Becky as looking like English actress Diana Dors who was a big star around this time, but with the same voice as Jennifer Ellison, a more recent English actress (also a singer, dancer and TV presenter) who has a very broad Liverpool accent like Becky.

Sometimes I've made characters look like famous people to set the time period, or for humour. For example in 'The Lost Hours With Annabelle' which is set in 1962 the narrator Jim has a younger sister named Doris, who looks very much like American movie star and singer Doris Day. Doris, who takes herself very seriously and has no tolerance for any humour at her expense, does not appreciate constantly being reminded of her similarity to her celebrity lookalike.

 

[Abbafan]

Actors, people I see in pictures, whoever I tend to fancy at the moment I guess.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Not me. In general I don't write with a strong visual focus so I don't need any kind of visual model for my characters.

I have one minor character in my first Literotica story whose looks and affect were inspired by Eugene Hütz but that's about it. Another even more minor character who is named for a prominent occultist but that's more of an Easter egg than a model.