The same actors in every show??

Funny you mentioned the American girl, Caroline Spalding, as she stood out like a sore thumb to me! I wondered if she was a British actress trying to do an American accent, because something wasn't quite natural about her. Turns out she is Anna-Louise Plowman, a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, but originally from New Zealand.

On another side note, she is apparently married to Toby Stephens (Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre 2006) and her mother-in-law is Maggie Smith! Again, this is all OT from the thread, but makes for interesting trivia.

There were no tall people in Victorian times?

As a big period drama person, I've often noticed recurring actors in period pieces. Though it doesn't bother me, in fact I quite like it!

In this one specifically, I've seen the actors from: The Man in the Iron Mask, Casanova, A Knights Tale, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Poriot, The Importance of Being Earnest, Mansfield Park, I Capture the Castle, Anna and the King, Emma, Jane Eyre, Lost in Austen, Northanger Abbey, Rebecca, Alice in Wonderland, Lark Rise to Candleford, The Way We Live Now, The Forsyte Saga, Pride and Prejudice, Cranford, Miss Potter, Lorna Doone, Hamlet, Gosford Park, Stage Beauty, The Other Boleyn Girl, Little Dorrit and Vanity Fair.

I disagree with the idea that actors look right for the period, I think that people can be miscast and then look wrong in the part, but I think it an odd notion that people can *look* period, there are different fashions in beauty but that isn't the same thing in my opinion.

What I’ve always thought, is that some actors like period stuff and others don't same as other people, I'm not an actor but would love to be in a period thing, where as I know people who couldn't care less. As a viewer, if some one is adapting one of my favourite novels, I would appreciate if the actors had at least read it and didn't hate it.


I would have a signature but I don't know what to put

In the director's commentary on the Notting Hill DVD, Richard Curtis says that actors in England all know each other because they work together all the time. I think Elizabeth McGovern says something similar in one of her Downton Abbey interviews on PBS.com.

It's just a smaller industry.