1. Not only was Reese Witherspoon the first actor cast, director Francis Lawrence revealed to Den of Geek, “She was one of the first people I ever pitched for the movie in general and the only person I pitched for the character of Marlena. I wanted a real all-American girl to play the character, and I think she’s a great actress—smart, sexy, funny. We wanted to build around her once she was on board.”
2. Robert Pattinson, meanwhile, was one of the last actors to join in the role of Jacob (no, not that werewolf), with Lawrence admitting, “In all honesty, I was skeptical after Twilight, because I didn’t know, because of how stylized those movies are, I didn’t know what he could do behind all the contacts and make-up and stuff. When I sat down with him, I realized that he’s quite a bit like the Jacob character himself,” he said of his film’s lead. “He’s a really good guy, and even with all the craziness, he’s still very humble, still very comfortable in his own skin.”
3. However, this wasn’t the first time Witherspoon and Pattinson worked together. The Twilight star played her estranged son in 2004’s Vanity Fair, but his part was cut from the final version and the deleted scene ended up as a DVD extra.
“He was walking down this corridor and I turned to the director and I said, ‘That’s my son? He’s so good looking,'” she recalled in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I was like, ‘He’s so hot!'”
