Christina Hendricks

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Rosemarie DeWitt, Mad Men, TV, 2007-2015.  
    The buxom Hendricks auditioned for the marijuana-loving, beatnik illustrator Midge Daniels (and Don Draper’s lover) and became, of course, Joan Harris (nee Holloway), the secretarial factotum and future partner at the Sterling Cooper ad agency (where the boss had been her lover until heart attacks  and a child got in the way). At the time, Hendricks  had the choice of two pilot shows and decided to work on Madison Avenue. Her agents scoffed. “It’s on AMC, it’s a period piece, it’s never going to go.   Are you crazy? You’re not going to make money for us…   I thought it was a little impatient of them. So I moved on.”  Series creator Matthew Weinerhad a  similar story. When  he sent his pilot script to his agents,  they didn’t read it for three or four months. “They’re not my agents anymore.” Hailed as one of the finest TV series of all time,  it lasted  nine triumphant  years… winning 15 Emmys, including a record four in succession as best series. Agents!

  2. Drea de Matteo, Dark Places, 2013.      The Mad Men marvel was first booked for stripper Krissi Cates and then promoted to Charlize Theron’s flash backed murdered mother when Samantha Morton quit the film of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling 2009 thriller.
  3. Carla Gugino, Roadies,  TV, 2015- .  After the pilot was over… auteur-exec-producer Cameron Crowe respun his first TV venture’s heroine Shelli  and reshot all her  scenes.  Just as he’d already re-booted  his 2000 Almost Famous rock tour movie into this series. Since the Mad Men finale,  Hendricks was busy enough: Another Period, Dark Places, God’s Pocket, Hap And Leonard, The Neon Demon, Rick and Morty, etc.
  4. Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman, 2015.  On Warner shelves for a full decade (not helped by David Kelley’s disastrous 2011 TVersion), spinning through numerous wonder women directors, the demi-goddess daughter of Zeus, eventually became the Israeli Gadot. “Very different,” she said, “from the experienced, super-confident, grown-up woman” she’d teaser-trailed that year in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, 2015.  Her rivals for the DC Extended Universe included  Mischa Barton, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Rachel Bilson, Sandra Bullock in 2001 (and for the 2011 tele-film), Bollywood’s Priyanka Chopra in 2006, US wrestling star Chyna, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eva Green, Mad Men’s busty Christina Hendricks (Nicolas Winding Refn’s choice in 2011), Angelina Jolie in 2001 (ten years later she was asked to direct), Cobie Smulders (WW’s voice in The Lego Movie, 2013), Kristen Stewart. The final trio, auditioning in November 2013, were Olga Kurylenko, Elodie Yung and… Gadot.
  5. Claire Van Houten, Domino, Denmark-France, Italy-Belgium-Holland, 2017. Brian De Palma had planned the fillm for the Mad Men find, but Holland put up some of the budget and  so Paul Verhoeven’s star, Van Houten, and Danish Nikolaj Coster-Waldau had to be her  lweading man. It helped that both came from TV’s mega-hit,  Game of Thrones. Helped raise the budget, that is. Not the movie. Guy Pearce stole it but  De Palma had long since lost his mojo.

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