Movies and books use very different methods to tell a story. Books lead our imagination through words. Movies use visual and special effects to make us see what the characters go through, and what their lives look like. Moviemakers can change a few details here and there to make the story more eye-catching. Many movies are based on books, but not all characters from movie adaptations look the same as their book versions.
These characters are very different from how they are described in the books. If you’re wondering how different they can be, then scroll down. Here are 10 characters from movie adaptations versus their book versions.
1. Triss Merigold, The Witcher
Source: © The Witcher / Netflix
In the original version, Triss Merigold is a young girl with blue eyes and brown ginger hair. Her features were completely changed in the Netflix adaptation. Anna Shaffer, who plays Merigold, gets a lot of heat for her look in the show. The showrunners later changed her character’s appearance to better match the book version.
2. Armand, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
Source: © Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles / Warner Bros
Antonio Banderas did an amazing job portraying Armand on screen. His charming look capture the audience’s hearts, especially with his long dark hair and red velvet attire. However, Anne Rice’s description of Armand is a little bit different. He is supposed to be a 17-year-old man with curly ginger hair that looks similar to Cupid or one of Sandro Botticelli’s angels.
3. Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray
Source: © Getty Images
In the book, Dorian Gray is a handsome young man with blue eyes and golden curls. So when he got the role, Ben Barnes intended to color his hair and wear contact lenses. He never had to do it because the film director was perfectly satisfied with his appearance. Turned out Oliver Parker walked around with his photo asking people if the actor was beautiful enough before he cast Barnes.
4. John Milton, The Devil’s Advocate
Source: IMDb
The book version of John Milton is a tall man with bushy silver hair, pale skin, and red cheeks. The movie version of him is played by Al Pacino, who looks nothing like that. Pacino did a great job of bringing the character to life though. We couldn’t imagine anyone else in his place.
5. Vronsky, Anna Karenina
Source: © Anna Karenina / Universal Pictures
Vronsky was described as “a short, well-built man with brown hair, that started losing hair early.” However, the creators of the 2012 movie Anna Karenina chose to ignore these bad traits and focused on the more positive ones instead. In the movie, Vronsky has beautiful golden locks and he is quite tall too.
6. Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina
Source: © Anna Karenina / Universal Pictures
The main character Anna Karenina also changed a lot in the movie adaptation. She was supposed to be a plump woman, and Keira Knightley is not even one bit curvy. Replying to the comments about her look in the film, Keira Knightley jokingly said, “I think that if I was made plump with makeup or a costume, nobody would even talk about my character: everyone would just discuss the plump Keira Knightley.”
7. The classic version of Harley Quinn
Harley Quinn, keira knightly hair, daario naharis book" />Source: © Suicide Squad / Warner Bros
Harley Quinn has many character designs, but one of her most famous appearances is her design in the 1992 Batman cartoon. In this classic version, she wears a red and black Harlequin suit, complete with a jester hat. In the newer version portrayed by Margot Robbie, she ditched the jumpsuit and went for a more colorful attire instead.
8. Daario Naharis, Game of Thrones
Source: © Game of Thrones / HBO
Daario Naharis in the Game of Thrones looks very different from his book version. George Martin describes him as a flamboyant man who has blue eyes and curly hair that fall to his collar. His beard is divided into 3 prongs and dyed blue while his pointed mustache is painted gold.
9. Erik, The Phantom of the Opera
Source: © The Phantom of the Opera / Warner Bros.
Speaking of characters from movie adaptations that look much more handsome than their original version, Erik in The Phantom of the Opera also went through a lot of changes before he appeared on screen too. In the book version, he was an incredibly thin man with very deep eyes, yellow skin, and a small, almost invisible nose. Bonus: he was bald too. No wonder why Christine didn’t choose him.
10. Edward Rochester, Jane Eyre
Source: © Jane Eyre / BBC Film
In the book, Rochester is described by Charlotte Brontë as a man with a heavy brow, dark hair and brown eyes, big nostrils, and a stern face. Michael Fassbender looks very different from this description, but he still gets the part. Director Cary Fukunaga admitted that he could have gone with people who looked more like the book version, but he felt Michael Fassbender was a better choice.
Do you think these characters from movie adaptations are better than their original versions or are they much worse? On the other hand, we got actors who have become the spitting images of the historical figures they portrayed. Their transformations really leave us breathless, so check them out
here!