David Fincher Cast Daniel Craig for His "Robert Mitchum Center"

For his ideal leading man in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, director David Fincher explains that he was seeking someone with an inner ROBERT MITCHUM, and James Bond star Daniel Craig was that actor.

“The casting process began with Daniel, and if you build your universe, it's like a good basketball team, you start with the anchor. And I knew him to be self-effacing and witty, and I knew that I needed that for Mikael. I wanted a very masculine center to the film. The androgynous side of the movie would be carried by Rooney, that was her job. So I knew that I needed a sort of Robert Mitchum center. And so when we had Daniel that was a fait accompli."

The closest Fincher came to working with Mitchum himself? In two degrees, Sean Penn (The Game) to Robert De Niro (the Cape Fear remake, in which Mitchum had a cameo).

Via News OK.