‘Interview With the Vampire’ Director on Casting Tom Cruise Over Daniel Day-Lewis and the Backlash That Followed: ‘The Entire World’ Said ‘You Are Miscast’
variety.comNeil Jordan‘s “Interview With the Vampire” film adaptation released in 1994, Tom Cruise was already a worldwide star. He had led the highly successful “Risky Business” and “Top Gun” and received an Oscar nomination for “Born on the Fourth of July.” But, not everyone was convinced he could play the titular vampire, Lestat de Lioncourt, and his casting caused a considerable amount of backlash among fans of Anne Rice’s original book.
In an excerpt from his new memoir published in The Telegraph, director Jordan reflected on his decision to cast Cruise opposite Brad Pitt and the outrage that followed, recalling how he originally offered the role to Daniel Day-Lewis. “The problem was the casting of Lestat.
Brad Pitt had agreed to play Louis and somehow assumed Daniel Day-Lewis would be playing Lestat, an assumption shared by Anne.
I offered it to Daniel, who read it, and, as I expected, didn’t want to play the character,” Jordan wrote. “A few years before, he had confined himself to a wheelchair to play Christy Brown in ‘My Left Foot.’ He would have had to sleep in a coffin for the entirety of this production if he followed the same practice.
Read more on variety.com