Oh my, Rooney!
Yup, that was Rooney Mara last night making her first red carpet appearance since transforming herself into Lisbeth Salander for her starring role in David Fincher's U.S. movie adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
She jetted into Hollywood for the L.A. premiere of Tanner Hall, her indie coming-of-age flick about an all-girls boarding school in New England co-written and co-directed by Tatiana von Furstenberg and Francesca Gregorini.
Mara may not have been talking but she didn't need to because...
Her look still says it all. Her hair remains chopped Lisbeth short (she had the tiniest of a ponytail poking out from the back of her head) and she was even wearing one of her eyebrow rings. Wearing a black and white number from Diane von Furstenberg, Mara is still pale and noticeably thinner.
"Obviously, Fincher wanted to go with someone even younger than the Swedish version," Stellan Skarsgård, who plays Martin Vanger in the movie, recently told me while promoting the DVD release of his latest flick, Thor. "He wanted someone more vulnerable, more androgynous and I think it pays off.
"I think Rooney is doing a great job," he said.
And Fincher, like he always does, put the cast through the ringer. But no one's actually complaining. "He said to me when we started shooting, 'This will not be fun because I do like 40 takes on each set-up,'" Skarsgård said. "I said, 'I'm not going to work with you if it's not fun—so let's have fun doing 40 takes.'"
"I've really enjoyed it," he continued. "I've had fun. I like the possibility of doing 40 takes differently. It's not about doing it perfectly. He's about getting as much out of the scene as possible and you're free to try things, you're free to go in a different direction."
He added, "I've seen the Swedish movie and I thought it was good. I think Fincher and the writer Steven Zaillian can do even more with it."
Of the Tattoo Girl's leading man Daniel Craig, Skarsgård said, "You shouldn't be fooled just because he's good with a gun. He's a good actor and not just a handsome man."
Skarsgård is currently shooting The Avengers, the superhero ensemble in which he reprises his Prof. Erik Selvig role from Thor (out on Blu-ray and DVD, Sept. 13). While Skarsgård acknowledged that his "part is much smaller in The Avengers," he also said that he's contracted for at least five Thor-related flicks.