I do like Heather Graham...
But she was not only miscast in this movie, but her accent is terrible. Johnny Depp outdid her IMHO.
shareI agree. I also didn't feel any sympathy for her. Her performance was flat.
shareAnd in addition to giving a flat performance with an unconvincing accent, she was FAR too beautiful to play the kind of street whore who spends every night hoping to get enough business to sleep indoors. And far too clean, well-groomed, and glam, a woman of the Whitechapel streets should have filthy hair and teeth coming loose, grubby clothes and a face that looks years older than her real age.
Did you know that when the lowest urban poor of that era couldn't afford a room or a bunk bed in a flophouse, they'd sleep draped over ropes? Yup, for a penny a night, they wouldn't be lying down, but they'd be indoors and not freezing to death. That was what life was like in Whitechapel, and believe me, that life doesn't leave anyone looking like Heather Graham.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f0/57/4a/f0574a4e67e1c5749f345834d489aabb.jpg
To be fair Abberline din't look like Johnny Depp either
And that level of authenticity in the casting could have ruined the picture, people like historical accuracy but not that much
Maybe just cast someone who's actually British, who isn't knockout beautiful, and who's willing to be seen with messy hair? Okay, Hollywood isn't going to show us a woman with one dress that's never washed and missing teeth, or anything that authentic, but maybe someone like Samantha Morton in "The Libertine", from a couple of years later?
She was cute but hardly a great beauty, and she started the film with grubby hair and no makeup, like a proper lowdown street whore. And she's British, and she can act.
They cast Heather Graham and Johnny Depp for the same reason Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty played Bonnie & Clyde. The real Clyde Barrow was the furthest thing from a tall, handsome man, not to mention he had a limp because he needlessly cut off his big toe in prison and seriously injured the other one in order to get out of hard labor (I say "needlessly" because he was released early a mere week later). Meanwhile Bonnie Parker was decent looking in real life, but she was only 4'11" while Dunaway is 5'7". Film is a visual medium and producers know that viewers are attracted by beautiful/handsome people.
shareYes, moviegoers like to watch good-looking people, but there are roles where being too good-looking doesn't work, like casting someone with a bodybuilder's physique as someone starving to death in a prison camp, or casting an amazing beauty as a street hooker who can barely make enough money to stay alive. I mean good looks are enough of an advantage in her line of work that it just isn't believable that she'd be so unsuccessful at her job, you know?
Plus she's a weak actress and can't do a convincing Brit accent, and didn't have the nerve even wear a period hairstyle. There's really no defending her casting.
Eric Bana in "Hulk" is another example of bad casting. Although he is likable in the role, and I've gotten used to him, he just doesn't exude Dr. Banner as depicted in the comics or the TV series; he's too much of a handsome muscleman who looks like he could kick some serious arse without turning into the Hulk, which takes away from the whole concept. By contrast, Bill Bixby and Mark Ruffalo fit the character, even Edward Norton.
shareGood one! Because yes, there should be a massive physical contrast between Banner and the Hulk, and Bana is a big muscular guy.
An example of too-beautiful miscasting was when they cast Nicole Kidman as a janitor in "The Human Stain", women with her looks just don't end up in those sorts of jobs. Or Brad Pitt as Achilles, nobody could have such a perfect face after years of fighting with blunt or bladed weapons. Or Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in a Bond movie. Well, I suppose it's possible that there are hot nuclear physicists out there, but usually people have to choose between the amount of time and effort it takes to build a career in an extremely challenging field, or the amount of time and effort it takes to be seriously hot. I mean, look at Dolph Lundgren, he had top degrees in chemical engineering and was going for another doctorate at MIT, but he chucked it all to go to Hollywood and live the life of a hot person. (No, really!)
You'd be surprised, though, by the extremely attractive people you come across in the most unlikely places. For instance, a girl I went to high school with enlisted in the army and she was as hot as any Hollywood starlet you care to name. Think Megan Fox, but with better curves. She sent me a photo from Germany of her dressed up as a Playboy bunny at a party and it was jaw-dropping.
Another example, I was camping at Great Basin National Park in the middle-of-nowhere Nevada and during a solo-hike met a female ranger at the trail kiosk who was mind-blowingly beautiful and beaming.
True, you see the occasional knockout in jobs that don't require good looks, like there was this good-looking kid working at a Target a few years ago whose photo went viral, just because he was a good-looking person in an ordinary job.
But have you ever seen a real stunner in a field where you have to spend your teens and twenties studying 22 hours a day, and spend your hottest years not taking advantage of your looks? I suppose there must be someone out there like that, but I haven't seen any in real life.
In my experience exceptionally good-looking people are everywhere and at all ages. They may be the exception, not the rule, but they're there if you look. That's why I didn't mind Denise Richards as the nuclear physicist in Kazakhstan. While it may be unlikely, it's not completely unrealistic.
shareIf Richards gets slammed for the role, IMHO it's more for her acting than her looks. She doesn't come across as intelligent or well-educated, to put it politely.
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