Fans were disappointed after the recent casting of Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort as romantic leads in The Fault in Our Stars and as siblings in Divergent. But we have to ask: Why?
The major concern is that it’s just weird. Why would one movie studio cast a pair of actors as lovers and a second one cast them as a brother and sister duo? It feels strange, doesn’t it? Wrong somehow? Almost incestuous?
Actually, no. It doesn’t.
Actors are hired to pretend to be other people. The characters they portray – and therefore the relationships they have with their onscreen counterparts – stay on the screen. It’s not like they’re accidentally going to forget which movie they’re in and start kissing when they should be arguing across the dinner table.
They’re professionals, guys. They know what they’re doing.
In fact, they’re not even the first duo to have a familial bond in one movie and a romantic relationship in another. Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon did something similar in Vanity Fair and Water for Elephants. In Vanity Fair, Pattinson played Witherspoon’s son, while in Water for Elephants they shared some steamy moments.
Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon alternate ending for ‘Vanity Fair’:
Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon in the trailer for ‘Water for Elephants’:
Besides, saying two actors can’t play brother and sister in one movie and romantic leads in another is like saying one actor can’t play the hero in one film and the villain in a second, and we all know how ridiculous that is.
Take, for example, Tom Hardy. In Inception, Hardy plays Eames, who — although technically a criminal — is indeed one of the good guys. He helps Dom complete his mission, the one that will hopefully get him back to his kids. In The Dark Knight Rises, however, Hardy plays Bane, a truly terrifying villain that nearly destroys Batman and all of Gotham City. Eames and Bane are both standout characters with distinct personalities and distinct motives, and yet Tom Hardy plays them both equally well.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other examples. Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp have been in numerous films together. They’ve played roles ranging two of the major leads, to characters that barely even spend time together on screen. Each one of their films together has been quirky and unique and distinctly separate from any other. One role does not bleed into the other.
At the end of the day, an actor’s job is to embody a character and do what is necessary to portray that character on screen. They must successfully discard one character as they move into another in order to make their portrayal believable. And that is what Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort were hired to do. And if they do their jobs right, you won’t even see the actors on screen, only their characters.
Are you reserving judgment for Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, or are you just having trouble picturing these two actors playing opposite each other in such different roles?