Lynne Frederick

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

  1. Judi Bowker, Fratello sole, sorella luna (Brother Sun, Sister Moon), 1971.  Lynne aduitioned for the future St Clare, friend of the future St Francis of Assisi.  what Chicago critic  Roger Ebert put down Franco Zeffifrelli’s fjlm  as  “a big, limp Valentine of a movie, filled with an excess of sweetness and light. What a shame.”

  2. Caroline Langrishe, Les Miserables, TV, 1978.   In her audition, Frederick read for both Cosette and her mother, Fantine. The suits said she didn’t fit either classic role. Too old for Cosette…  

  3. Angela Pleasence, Les Miserables, TV, 1978.   … and too young for Fantine.  Richard Jordan and Anthony by Perkins were  Valjean and Javert. 
  4. Daryl Hannah. Splash, 1983.    A mermaid?  Moi?  That’s what they  all said, more or less.  Except Debra Winger who longed to be  Madison. (Director Ron Howard did not agree). The full 19 options were… Hannah,  Rosanna Arquette, Jodie Foster (she was booked into The Hotel New Hampshire), General  Hospital  soap queen Genie Francis, Melanie Griffith, Diane Lane, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tatum O’Neal, Michelle Pfeiffer, Molly Ringwald, Tanya Roberts (booked for Sheena: Queen of the Jungle), Ally Sheedy, Brooke Shields (studying French Literature at Princeton), Sharon Stone, Kathleen Turner, Lisa Whelchel (from The Facts of Life, 1979-1988), Debra Winger.  Plus two Brits, Lynne Frederick and Fiona Fullerton – impressive as the daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra, 1970. Oh and PJ Soles, who was originally chosen to co-star with… Bill Murray – as Disney’s new (“adult”) Touchstone unit rushed Splash into production to beat Warren Beatty’s similar “half-human-half-kipper” tail. Mermaid.
  5. Rachel Ward, The Thorn Birds, TV, 1983.  Lynne, Kim Basinger, Audrey Hepburn, Olivia Newton-John, Michelle Pfeiffer  and Jane Seymour were all the mix for Meggie Cleary, heroine of Colleen McCullough novel set in the 1920s’ Australian Outback. Bryan Brown was the only Aussie star in the down-under Gone With The Wind – made in LA. He married leading lady Rachel Ward. On and off-screen!  Amanda Donohoe was Meggie in the 1996 “midquel,” The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years.
  6. Tamlyn Tomita, The Karate Kid, Part II, 1985.        Missing from movies since sharing  the excrable Prisoner of Zenda with Peter Sellers in 1978  – the fourth Mrs Sellers planned a comeback. Columbia offered her Kumiko – then written as Anglo-Japanaese.  She prefered to concentrate on her new baby daughter with her third husband.  Sellers said she was “dynamite in bed.” Pretty nifty in the bank, too – manoevering his three kids out of Sellers scant millions (£5.4m), before dying  at 39 in 1994 from her chronic alcoholic and drug addiction. 

 Birth year: 1954Death year: 1994Other name: Casting Calls:  6