A story in London’s Mail Online about the casting of the children for Joe Wright’s adaptation of Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy’s expansive literary classic, reveals that Saoirse Ronan, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Andrea Riseborough, Olivia Williams and Domhnall Gleeson have joined the current cast led by Keira Knightley and Jude Law.
Set in the world of 19th Century Moscow aristocrats, Knightley plays the title character and wife of Law’s elder statesman Alexei Karenin, who is 20 years her senior, while Kick-Ass star Aaron Johnson plays her younger lover Count Vronsky.
While Macfadyen played Knightley’s love interest Darcy in Wright’s debut, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, in their reunion, he’ll play her brother Prince Stepan Oblonsky, while Macdonald (most recently seen in HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”) will play his wife Dolly.
Ronan, who starred in two of Wright’s previous films including his adaptation of Atonement for which she received an Oscar nomination, and the recent hit action-thriller Hanna, has been cast as Dolly’s sister Kitty. Another member of the Hanna cast, Williams will play Countess Vronskaya, the mother of Johnson’s character, while Gleeson, best known as Bill Weasley in the “Harry Potter” movies will play Levin, another close acquaintance of the family. Riseborough plays Princess Betsy.
Filming on the complex ensemble drama begins in September in Russia and the United Kingdom.
