Thanks to her looks and her charisma, plus her parents' Amazing Amy series, Amy had a couple of admirers-verging-on-stalkers in her childhood and adolescence. One of these, Desi Collings, was her first boyfriend, who dated her for a year before scaring her off by too often mentioning things like the names and genders of their children—and the fact that his mother looked just like Amy didn't help much. When Nick goes to Desi's home to question him about Amy's disappearance, he finds something rather different from what he was looking for. Desi is fabulously wealthy and is described as a "pale, Romantic figure," so who better than Ben Whishaw, who's already played both Keats in Bright Star and the supremely creepy Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume?
Photo by Trent McGinn, Interview, December 2005/January 2006
Nick has a twin sister, Margo Dunne, with whom he co-owns a bar in Carthage. She's a tough, smart, funny lady and Nick's greatest advocate—until the split second when she, too, starts to believe he's guilty. Rosamund Pike has similar bone structure to Bartha's, and we'd like to see her given the chance to be a brassy, mouthy broad.
Photo by Sean Gleason, Interview, December 2002/January 2003
"I have a face you want to punch: I'm a working-class Irish kid trapped in the body of a total trust-fund douchebag. I smile a lot to make up for my face, but this only sometimes works," Amy's husband, Nick Dunne, writes of his own appearance. In her first diary entry, Amy calls him "a great, gorgeous dude, a funny, cool-ass guy." Nick's a tricky character, too: it takes a long time before we're sure whether or not he's killed Amy, and the role requires an actor nimble enough to dart between seeming sympathetic and smarmy. Justin Bartha could handle the challenge.
Photo by Chad Blockley, Interview, August 2003
Though the titular Gone Girl, Amy Elliott Dunne, goes missing at the very beginning of the book, the reader still has plenty of opportunity to get to know her through a series of diary entries interspersed with her husband's narration. She seems at first to be the perfect wife: beautiful, smart, and sweet. But as the novel goes on, something darker beneath the surface is revealed bit by bit. We didn't pick Reese Witherspoon for the role ourselves—her production company is producing the film, so her decision to star was her own—but we're optimistic that such a deep, complex character could spark a comeback for Witherspoon.
Photo by Ellen von Unwerth, Interview, December 2005/January 2006
One of two lead detectives on Amy's missing-persons case, Detective Rhonda Boney, is described by Nick as "surprisingly ugly," with "a long twist of a nose" and "long lank hair the color of a dust bunny." She's also generally an ally to Nick, always evincing a suspicion that the case isn't quite what it seems. We want to pretty her up a little in the movie version, but still cast someone with an interesting face rather than a Hollywood-gorgeous one. The underrated Kathleen Wilhoite seems a good choice.
Amy's father, Rand Elliott, is a child psychologist who made a fortune in Amy's youth by co-writing the Amazing Amy series of children's books with his wife, Marybeth, about a perfect version of their daughter. When she goes missing, he's devastated—but also tries to keep a sense of humor and of decency. He is nice to, rather than suspicious of, Nick—until he's not. We haven't seen much of Jeff Goldblum lately, and he has the deeply sympathetic face we want to see on a grieving father. Plus, he shares Witherspoon's pointy chin.
