The new Lisbeth Salander.

Newcomer Rooney Mara has been cast as the iconic Lisbeth Salander in the Hollywood version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Rooney Mara – ever heard of her? If not, you will: After much speculation, Mara has been cast in the coveted role of Lisbeth Salander, the possibly autistic hacker heroine of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, in the American version of the hugely popular Swedish film. Lithe little Mara beat out Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson, and Ellen Page to star opposite Daniel Craig, who plays journalist-turned-investigator Mikael Blomkvist.

Or, as Richard Lawson at Defamer.com put it, “Well, the long wait is over. We have finally found our Elizabeth Salamander or whatever her stupid name is for the American (read: real) adaptation of Sting Larson’s book about a Swedish wizard who murders people or something, The Girl Who Was Dragons.”

Swedish actress Noomi Rapace as Salander.


Mara, whose previous acting experience includes a starring role in this year’s panned Nightmare on Elm Street remake, doesn’t have a ton of experience. “She is, however, lean and limber,” The Guardian’s culture writer, Ben Child, pointed out. So there’s that.

Some observers, however, lauded director David Fincher’s choice for the iconic Salander: Entertainment Weekly’s veteran film critic, Owen Gleiberman, declared, “I think that Fincher did the right thing, and in fact made a very bold and ingenious move, by choosing a relative unknown. It gave me a tingle of anticipation that she was unknown to me as well…. In a certain sense, the actress who plays her has to vanish emotionally, to dial down her expressiveness to a barely visible simmer, and to make that slight stuntedness itself expressive. A name star like Scarlett Johansson would have had a harder time doing that.”

And of course, the “Cinderella” style casting spectacle can’t hurt the film’s nascent buzz either, though Gleiberman saw Fincher’s decision to do that as “extremely shrewd” in a different way: “He captured and built into the movie, before it even started shooting, the momentous quality of Lisbeth as a character.”

Other observers appreciated the delicate problem facing Fincher, whose previous efforts include the disturbing Se7en, in casting Mara as Salander. Steve Zeitchick, of The Los Angeles Times’s 24 Frames blog, broke it down: “She’s brooding, but is she tough? She’s attractive, but is she too attractive? She can do moody, but can she get expressive? It’s nearly impossible to satisfy fans of a popular literary character: Pick a huge star and she comes freighted with her previous roles; take an unknown and fans ask, nervously, what she’s done to deserve the promotion.”

Fincher’s “split the difference” choice of a relative newcomer, an actress who has starred in films, but not big films, may be inspired, then; Zeitchik, at least, was cautiously optimistic.

Time, of course, will tell how the masses react to Mara’s Salander and Fincher’s Girl. In the meantime, check out The New York Times’s attempt at literary parody in breaking the news.