Carmody was described by King as 'an old woman' who ran the local antiquity shop with her husband - she calls herself 'Mother Carmody' and is described as gray-haired, wearing a canary yellow pantsuit with too much clacking jewelry. My immediate first thought was that Marcia Gay-Harden was not at all what I pictured when I'd previously read this story a good dozen times. Carmody in his 2007 adaptation of my all-time favorite Stephen King story, The Mist. I both did and did not experience this sensation when Frank Darabont hired Marcia Gay Harden to play the character of Christian super-bitch Mrs. Coulter in the admittedly ill-fated Golden Compass movie - these actors were already the faces you were picturing when you read the book, and seeing the movie get it right this way, it's always a buzz.
Think of Alan Rickman playing Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, or of Nicole Kidman as Mrs.
If you've ever been a big fan of a book that's been turned into a movie then you have probably known the eyebrow-singeing sensation of a book character getting cast by an actor that seems so correct, so perfect for the role, that it astonishes.
