Matthew Macfadyen sera Oblonsky dans le prochain 'Anna Karenina' de Joe Wright

Oh boy! Jude and Keira are looking for an (on-screen) son

Keira Knightley and Jude Law are seeking a son, while Matthew Macfadyen and Kelly Macdonald would like an instant brood of five.

These are the screen relationships that will make up one big happy (or rather not-so happy) family in the film version of Anna Karenina that will shoot in Britain and Russia from September.

I told you back in November that Keira would play Tolstoy’s great literary heroine in a new movie version written by Tom Stoppard. The film reunites Keira with Joe Wright, who directed her in Atonement and Pride & Prejudice. That’s where Matthew comes in.

He and Keira played the will-they-won’t-they lovers Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy in the Jane Austen classic. However, in Anna Karenina, Keira and Matthew play siblings.

Matthew has the part of Oblonsky, while Kelly — star of HBO’s compelling Boardwalk Empire — plays his wife Dolly.

The film’s casting executives are looking for brothers and sisters (cousins could be in the mix, too) to play the Oblonskys’ five children, who range in age from two to eight. The groupings must include a girl of around eight to play Tanya, the Oblonskys’ eldest daughter.

‘We want to capture that messy charm that comes with big families,’ Dixie Chassay, one of the executives, explained.

‘Dolly’s always pregnant. It’s always about family, and we want to capture that with brothers and sisters and cousins who play and are noisy and who laugh together.

‘Then there’s the son Keira has with Jude,’ Dixie continued, meaning their fictional child Seryozha.
The boy should be aged between seven and ten. ‘We are in the world of Tolstoy, so we need someone poetic,’ Dixie noted.

Ideally, for all of the kids’ roles, the casting people want to meet European (particularly French and Russian) siblings or cousins, although all must be able to speak English. They’d also look at children from large English families (the traditional kind you might see in the Bystander section of Tatler).
Aaron Johnson will play Anna’s lover Vronsky.

Jude joked to me recently that once upon a time he would have played such a part, but is ‘too old’ to be the dashing lothario. ‘I’m the cuckolded husband now,’ he told me.

Olivia Williams, who was so good in Wright’s thriller Hanna, will play Countess Vronskaya, Vronsky’s mother. Saoirse Ronan, who appeared with Keira in Atonement and had the lead in Hanna, will play Kitty, Dolly’s sister.

The fast-rising Andrea Riseborough has been cast as Princess Betsy, who always knew how to have too good a time. Andrea has two upcoming movies: Resistance and W.E.

Domhnall Gleeson — Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter movies — has been cast as Levin.

Tim Bevan of Working Title, who is producing the film with Eric Fellner and Paul Webster, believes the story — about a woman who has an affair with a younger man but remains trapped in her stale marriage to a dull husband — has ‘incredible relevance today’.

He added: ‘That’s why it has remained a classic through all this time — because people relate to it.’

Please contact Dixie Chassay’s assistant, Isabella Odoffin, at assistantdixiechassay@gmail.com with any questions or ideas relating to the casting of children.