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Casting Call: The Glass Castle

We've got no qualms about Jennifer Lawrence playing the lead role, writer Jeannette Walls. She can carry an emotionally heavy film (Winter's Bone) but she's still the woman we can't help but cheer for even when she trips at the Oscars. Twice.

 

 

Jeannette's younger brother Brian Walls appears her greatest champion in the novel. Together, he and Jeannette defend the family from the efforts of local bullies. Like Lori and Jeannette, he's well aware of the instability of home life and plans to leave. He ends up joining his sisters in Manhattan, where he becomes a police officer. Craig Roberts first caught our attention in Submarine (2010) where he played angsty 15-year-old schoolboy Oliver Tate. This was followed by 2011's Jane Eyre alongside Mia Wasikowska. But the young Welshman really stood out as Assjuice in this year's trashy teen romp Neighbors, where he plays a young fraternity pledge recruited to bring down his brothers. He can convincingly disguise his thick native accent and his dark, tired eyes betray a wisdom beyond his years well-suited to the role of Brian. 

 

 

Alcoholic, flighty, impatient but nurturing, Rex Walls clearly loves his children but is wholly unable to provide for them. He spends the family's money funding his drinking and occasional gambling and appears incapable of holding down a stable job—a dysfunctional nature partially fueled by his own childhood abuse. He gradually loses his standing in the eyes of his family as his decisions cost them stability and comfort. But the children never doubt he loves them, and Jeannette's narrative portrays him as highly intelligent if challenged in applying himself. We suggest Joaquin Phoenix for the role, for his expressive eyes and emotional versatility. Could he be the "major" actor to which Feltheimer alluded?

 

 

Evan Rachel Wood first made a name for herself as the mature-beyond-her-years Tracy Freeland in Thirteen. Ten years later, she's all grown up, with the film credentials to make her a great Lori Walls, Jeannette's older sister with whom she moves to New York. The two girls, determined to find their place outside the difficulties of their unique family life, earn the money to leave home, though encounter setbacks when Rex finds their savings. Lori succeeds in escaping to the city before Jeannette, making a living as an illustrator before her younger sister ultimately joins her.

 

 

The spirited artist, Rose Mary Walls frequently complains of what she could accomplish if not burdened with four children. Rose Mary is also an occasional teacher, but often expresses that the job quashes her creativity. By the end of The Glass Castle, Rose Mary elects to live homeless in New York, following her children to Manhattan but choosing a different path once she arrives in the city. Julianne Moore has played an excellent mother figure in What Maisie Knew, The Kids Are All Right, and Children of Men. She's beautiful and energetic (and seemingly ageless) and ideal for the part of Rose Mary.

 

 

She may have only appeared for one episode, but Kerris Dorsey certainly stole our hearts in the previous season of Mad Men. She plays Sandy, a troubled older friend of Don Draper's daughter Sally who dreams of attending the Juilliard School. Throughout The Glass Castle, Maureen Walls appears the most misunderstood of the Walls children—she doesn't connect to her siblings and spends as much time as possible at the houses of friends, sleeping over and eating where she can. Jeannette, Brian, and Lori bring her to New York, but Maureen leaves them when Rose Mary and Rex decide to come along as well. She spends a year in a mental hospital after an altercation with her mother, and then moves across the country to California, following rose-tinted recollections of her childhood. Casting directors will confront some difficulty with the timeline of The Glass Castle, as it traces the entire youth and adolescence of each of its characters as told by Jeannette. Dorsey has a youthful face but the mature expressions of an adult. Her versatility in that regard would be a definite asset to the film.