There have been the pap-snap telephoto lens looks at Rooney Mara in David Fincher’s take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but now the first close-up, official images of Mara in costume as Lisbeth Sandler have appeared courtesy of W Magazine. And they are, it must be said, striking.
Few expected the famously meticulous Fincher to glam up the character for her Hollywood makeover, and so it has proved to be, with Mara looking worlds away from the Erica Albright character that delivers the hard truth to Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg at the start of The Social Network. Here, as is entirely fitting for Salander, Mara would be more likely to stab him with a sex toy before lighting a cigarette and striding from the room.
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Click to see more pictures on wmagazine.com
Talking of assault with a deadly dildo, a scene featuring just that was apparently part of the intensive audition process that Fincher put several actresses through. “It was hard,” Fincher tells W (via JoBlo). “We had five or six girls audition with the rape scene. The girls had to kick a dildo up his ass. That’s Salander’s big scene, and we had to see if they could do it.”
And he was especially tough on Mara. “David added the rape scene at the last minute, and I said, ‘Ohmigod! They must be really serious.’ They did one test, then another a week later. They shot me in the subway in LA in full hair and makeup with a motorcycle. Every day they had a new request. On a Monday morning, David called me in, and I said, ‘What do you want me to do to my hair now?’ I was at the end of my rope. He told me I had the part. I hadn’t even read the script yet.”
“Before I read the book, I didn’t think I could do it. Locked myself in a room for a week and read all three books, and decided I really wanted to be Lisbeth. But I thought I had no shot at it.” Despite competition from the likes of Scarlett Johansson and Winter’s Bone actress Jennifer Lawrence, Mara won out.
The W piece on Fincher and the film is fascinating and well worth checking out.** The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo**, meanwhile will be out on December 26.