Fiennes is way to clean cut for the role, imho and too light haired.

Yeah, but -- clean-cut and light-haired can be altered with no problem.

Step-siblings or half-siblings?

...actually, the obvious choice to play Heathcliff is Sean Bean. I mean, he's from South Yorkshire, not North Yorkshire, but what's a few miles between friends? He'd be awesome. Who to put opposite him...hmm...that's the thing, it should be someone who hits you with her strength of character first and foremost, not her fragile beauty.

Sean Bean would be AWESOME as Heathcliff. For Cathy, I propose Emily Watson. (Come to think of it, Bean and Watson were in that pretty-but-stupid movie, Equilibrium, together as lovers, but we never got to watch them together since it was pre-movie.) Watson's got the acting chops and the intensity, and she could be ferocious when needed.

who views you as an equal, and who scares the crap out of other people but not out of you because you are so utterly two halves of the same whole - I can see the appeal of that. But that isn't the same as finding that character inherently appealing. It's the dynamic that's appealing, I think. It's just that people mistake the two.

So much this. It's a bit of train wreck, these two utterly crazy people who are so clearly suited for no one but each other, and cut this swath of destruction through the world because of it -- it's sort of awesomely terrifying and gorgeous in its own way, like a tornado or a hurricane.

I always felt like I might want *someone* to love me like that, before realizing what that might actually mean (i.e., when I was, like, ten).

HE KILLS PUPPIES.

Step-siblings or half-siblings?

Yikes! Half!

Thanks for rescuing me from my brain fuzziness. Maybe cutting out sugar was a bad idea. My brain is STARVING!

Sean Bean would be AWESOME as Heathcliff. For Cathy, I propose Emily Watson.

This I would watch.

It's the dynamic that's appealing, I think. It's that people mistake the two.

Abso-fucking-lutely.

...of course, I may be talking total bollocks.

Oh hell no. You make total sense.

it's sort of awesomely terrifying and gorgeous in its own way, like a tornado or a hurricane.

That scene from Angel during the Boxer Rebellion-- Angelus, Darla, Spike, carrying Dru all in slow motion through the flames and chaos. Beauty amidst utter destruction.

I can kind of see that, actually - Fiennes is intense and a bit mad, but he's also very Southern and very posh. Or at least that's his image as an actor. Ditto Olivier. And Heathcliff is, in class terms, the equivalent of some roughneck Texas cowboy.

I found Fiennes' physicality unconvincing, and I just couldn't get past all my previous associations with him in other roles. I was acutely conscious that he was pretending, which is really the last thing you want to be thinking when you're watching a performance (although at least it wasn't as hilariously bad as poor Juliette Binoche, whom I love, but who had absolutely no business at all playing that role, bless her).

Sean Bean. Wow. It's never crossed my mind before, but I'm kind of astounded it hasn't happened before now - I mean, fuck, Heathcliff is like THE strapping alpha male Yorkshire (anti)hero, and Bean is THE strapping alpha male Yorkshire actor. Why hasn't somebody made this already?

Surely there were umpteen urchins from which he could have chosen, so in picking Heathcliff, he must have had a reason, such as fathering an illegitimate child with some random woman.

I had a professor with a similar theory, if I recall correctly.

Unrelated but interesting: Terry Eagelton on Heathcliff as famine-period Irish immigrant. Fascinating stuff about ideas of the uncivilized other, and the need of the English to reassert their gentrified culture over untamed nature.