Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter. Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. Leonardo DiCaprio as that sad guy from Revolutionary Road. Actors bring the characters of fiction to life. But doesn't fiction do that too? This week, we asked whether the portrayal of fictional characters on screen actually gets in the way of the imaginative enjoyment of books, which, after all, are really a collaboration between writer and reader: the former outlines the details, and the latter colors them in.
Mostly, readers do feel that movies get in the way of their imaginative rendering of a book's characters, except for Facebook commenter John Paul Ritchey, who simply said "No." No, it doesn't bother him at all. Not at all. Others, like Elwira Blazewicz (Facebook), take the wise step of not watching the movie before reading the book: "I read the book first and in this case have my own picture of character."
Twitter follower @twohectobooks laments a misstep on this front: "yes :( wish I'd finished the #HarryPotter books before seeing the movies for that reason."
@aedifacio has an interesting requirement of the actor in question, only feeling bothered "when the actor gets the character "spot on" for me. Otherwise, no."
The most interesting response was a kind of reversal of the usual procedure. AmandaWow_k protects herself this way: "I won't read a book after seeing the film."
