Perfectly Cast Movies.

Boys around the age of 14.

Casted.

I always thought The Birds was perfectly cast. I loved seeing Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, and Suzanne Pleschette together. While Hedren was never a strong actress, she fit her role perfectly.

Match Point is another film that comes to mind. Jonathan Rhys Meyers in particular was perfect as a venal social climber. The posh wife (Emily Mortimer ) and mistress (Scarlett Johansson ) as well.

Point Break, the original.

I'm not usually a Kidman fan but she was perfect in The Others as the frau who went mad and offed her kids. The child actors were quite good as well.

Victor/Victoria. Great cast, great chemistry, all perfect in the roles. It is the only musical I've ever liked. Does it qualify as a musical?

The Breakfast Club?

The Asphalt Jungle

Gone With The Wind (except for Ashley). Why on earth Scarlett lusted after Ashley when she could have been bouncing on top of Rhett is something I'll never know. Ashley was pale, skinny and old while Rhett was dark and dashing and daring, much like Scarlett herself.

Barbara Streisand and Omar Shariff in Funny Girl and the supporting actors were perfectly cast. Streisand reprising her star making Broadway role in probably the most successful big screen debut that launched her into a superstar. She hadn’t been able to duplicate that level of vulnerability as an actor in her later movies.

Steel Magnolias

Terms Of Endearment . Doctor Zhivago . Clueless !

Ghostbusters

Psycho and Vertigo. I've read a lot of complaints about James Stewart in "Vertigo" but I thought he was great as the tortured/twisted/damaged character. I've read that people found him too old for Madeline/Judy but I didn't see him that way.

While I'm on a Hitch kick, "North By Northwest should qualify. Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason were all perfect.

Two Humphrey Bogart movies, Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.

For movies this century, Moonlight and Parasite.

The Women, 1939.

Mahogany, Life imitating art

Clue

Carrie. You start to realize it once you've seen the two remakes and a production or two of the stage musical. They were able to make those characters work better than anyone else.

Paper Moon (1973) the O'Neals as a father/daughter pair mildly contemptuous of one another and bearing an actual resemblance, Madelaine Kahn as the floozy, PJ Johnson as the lady's maid, Burton Gilliam, Randy Quaid, and all other supporting roles are spot on.

Citizen Kane

Chinatown

Boys In The Band. An absolute perfect cast with special props to the actors playing, Michael, Emory and Harold.

The Wizard of Oz

I'd add What's Up, Doc? and The Maltese Falcon.

The Talented Mr Ripley, including the additional characters that were not in the book.

R21, 100% agree. I love that movie. Perfectly cast for sure.

Doubt

The Innocents - Deborah Kerr, Michael Redgrave, Megs Jenkins, and Martin Stephens & Pamela Franklin as the children.

Another vote for The Maltese Falcon (1941) . In addition to the other Hitchcock films mentioned above, Shadow Of A Doubt is also perfectly cast.

r30, agree with The Innocents. Love that movie.

Mulholland Drive

A Dog Day Afternoon. It was cast better than the real-life people it was based on.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Serial Mom

Tootsie. The entire cast was perfect.

Silence of the Lambs.

Hannibal just didn’t work for me because Julianne wasn’t Clarice.

Song of Norway

Clueless

The Last Picture Show

American Graffiti

Shadow of a Doubt

Amacord

The Breakfast Club

Goodfellas

first two Godfather films

The Sting

Every bit part right on up to the leads.

Murder By Death

9 to 5

Superman - Christopher Reeve (nobody else has even come close)

All About Eve

Rebecca

Nashville

The Shining

Terms of Endearment

Ordinary People

Pulp Fiction--especially impressive considering how many "has beens" were in the cast.

The Big Lebowski and Fargo.

Broadcast News.

The Princess Bride.

Forgot One: Working Girl.

Close Encounters of The Third Kind

Jaws

Being There

The Grifters

Addams Family Values

In & Out

Well, I Never in All My Life

Dawson’s 50-Load Weekend

Who else could have captured Dawson’s je ne sais quoi?

Death Becomes Her

Moonstruck.

Godfather and Godfather Part 2

Any Almodóvar film

Poltergeist is one for sure. Everyone does such a great job and Heather O'Rourke and Zelda Rubinstein feel like they were made for their roles.

A lot of great choices here...

My pics - although the films themselves are not necessarily highbrow -

A Nightmare on Elm Street - possibly the best acting in an '80s horror film if not for...

Creepshow - an absolute gem of camp.

I also think the original Murder on the Orient Express was brilliantly cast and with one or two wobbly moments with Anthony Perkins (the director and editor at fault rather than the actor) absolutely note perfect throughout.

I'm not sure Blade Runner is full of good acting, but it was superbly cast nonetheless.

Same thing with the original Star Wars films.

Dreamgirls

Scream

The Departed. The casting director did a beautiful job.

Merchant / Ivory films were generally well cast.

A Room With a View Howard's End Maurice

were all particularly well-cast.

Not a movie, but The Sopranos on HBO was perfectly cast.

Bit of trivia - Christopher Walken's wife was the casting director.

Ed Wood, with Martin Landau as Lugosi, Jeffrey Jones as Crisley (Ha! Criswell), Bill Murray as Bunny Breckenridge, and Johnny Depp's Wood wearing Sarah Jessica Parker's precious angora sweaters.

Brokeback Mountain

Strictly Ballroom

Some Like It Hot.

Of Mice and Men (Sinise/Malkovich version).

The Heiress.

The French Connection.

Romeo and Juliet (Whiting/Hussey version).

Goodfellas.

LA Confidential.

R19, Are you kidding?! That was a lousy movie, and the cast couldn't squeeze any humor from the script or with their actions. Tim Curry was wasted, and not in a good way.

Another vote for Some Like It Hot

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Gui Lai (Coming Home)

Raise the Red Lantern

El secreto de sus ojos

Nueve Reinas

36 Quai des Orfèvres

Shoplifters

I do not think Steel Magnolias was perfectly cast, r11. Olympia Dukakis and Julia Roberts barely scraped by, but Daryl Hannah was awful.

Victor/Victoria Rocky Horror Murder By Death A New Leaf My Favorite Year

"Jaws"

Oh, absolutely!!

No other mechanical shark could have pulled off that role as well as the mechanical shark they used.

R19 Clue is a POOR imitation of Murder By Death, which was not only perfectly cast-- but a perfect movie.

R78 A New Leaf was perfectly cast as well as My Favorite Year.

I question the other three.

Harold & Maude

OP “ I cannot imagine any other actors playing the principle roles.”

Oh dear oh dear.

"Auntie Mame" (1958)

Rosalind Russell

Peggy Cass as Agnes Gooch

Definitely agree with Tootsie, the first movie that came to mind.

I’ll add Young Frankenstein.

Disagree that "Terms of Endearment" was perfect casting. Sissy Spacek was allegedly supposed to play the role of Shirley MacLaine's daughter. I think Sissy would have been better than Deborah Winger. Shirley and Sissy would have been more plausible as mother and daughter.

Also, Shirley & Deborah did not get along.

R81 What casting issues do you have with Victor/Victoria, Rocky Horror and Murder By Death?

Carrie

R79 That's MISTER Mechanical Shark to you, Sir! (or Madam)

Bonnie and Clyde

Beatty and Dunaway at their height of beauty and glamour making a life of murder and mayhem look good. With relative newcomers Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons perfectly cast in supporting roles. Even Gene Wilder was good in his film debut

Coming to America

The Matrix

Someone should make a new thread. Perfectly cast Leads. That thread would be far more interesting.

R83 I stand corrected. Thank you. Perhaps you should learn how to used the quote feature ON DL.

^^haha. Just shot myself in the foot with that post.

To Die For

Amadeus

Goldfinger

Lawrence of Arabia

Becket

Ordinary People

I have to agree with several of you who mentioned [italic]Ordinary People[/italic].

More:

A Man for All Seasons.

The Day of the Jackal.

The Elephant Man.

A Streetcar Named Desire.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

The World of Henry Orient.

Alfie (Michael Caine version)..

A Hard Day's Night.

Long, Hot Summer.

The original "Star Wars" film. George Lucas has been known for decades as "The Worst Actors' Director Alive", and Carrie Fisher said she made the whole film with no input regarding her performance. No, one sentence of input, there was a time when he was to make it "bigger" or something, that was all the guidance he gave a teenage actress making her second movie!

IMHO the reason the film worked in spite of Lucas's ignoring his actors, was that they were all perfectly cast. Carrie Fisher didn't need to be told how to play a clever princess because she really was one, Harrison Ford really was a man of few words and a bit of a badass, Hammill really was an idiot kid, so the leading roles all succeeded in spite of Lucas. And the supporting roles were played by old pros who didn't need direction, so really, the entire film is a triumph of the casting director's art.

"Animal House".

Hilarious movie, funny from beginning to end, and one of those rare films where a huge ensemble is perfectly cast all the way through. Every jerk at the frat houses, every frat boy and mean girl, the professors and administrators, the snooty beatnik girls and Otis Day's band, even the Dean's secretary managed to steal every scene she was in.

It's strange about Lucas and actors because American Graffiti and, arguably, THX 1138, are so well cast and acted.

The Odd Couple - Felix, Oscar, the Pigeon sisters, the group of poker friends

R193, "Fnah! Fnah fnah!"

Dang, that was to r103!

Following on an earlier thread, The Exorcist.

R103 the show was so much better.

Superman

Spider-Man

Jaws 2 (I thought the original cast was too old so it made me root for the shark when I first saw it).

Rocky Horror Picture SHow (I'm the first to mention it?)

9 To 5

Misery

Star Wars & the next 2 sequels

Halloween 1 & 2

Sleepaway Camp

Friday The 13 all but the "Jason Goes To Hell" version

The Poseidon Adv.

Paper Moon

The Wizard Of Oz & the James Franco sequel

Mask (with Cher)

The Breakfast Club

All Disney cartoon films

Home Alone

The Good Son

Most of the classic 1930-50's horror films (Drac, Wolfman, etc.)

All of the Jurassic Park films

Who Framed Roger R.?

Alien 1 & 2

Race With The Devil

Forrest Gump

George Of The Jungle

Indian In The Cupboard

The Scream films

The Nightmare On Elm S> original versions

Panic Room

R108 No, Rocky Horror was mentioned way back in R87 ;-)

R108 Actually, Rocky Horror was first mentioned in R78

Airplane

Caddyshack

E.T.

The Shining

Top Gun

Goonies

The Outsiders

Dirty Dancing

To Wong Foo

The Birdcage

The Karate Kid 1 & Ghostbusters 1 (both of the originals)

Willow

The Thing (80s remake)

C. Dundee

The Lost Boys

16 Candles

The Princess Bride

Sharknado

"A River Runs through It" has some of the best casting I've ever seen.

Showgirls