Who Should Star in the Movie Version of The Fault in Our Stars?

If you haven’t read The Fault in Our Stars, a new novel by John Green, you’re missing out — on saying “aww” six million times, falling in love, and feeling damn lucky your cells haven’t turned savage on your insides. It’s a book about teenagers with cancer. While that may not sound like the most uplifting beach read to slip in your tote, it’s an ambitious and affecting piece.*

Enough people like it that it’s been #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list since it came out over a month ago, and the film rights have been optioned by Fox 2000. In honor of the movie news, Anna and Jenna got together  to cast the film for them (you’re welcome, Fox!). There aren’t any explicit spoilers, but please you don’t read further if you’re worried about that.

Hollywood has needed new casting directors since it chose an actress in supple, beaming health for Katniss from The Hunger Games, who is supposed to be from a starving, sooty slum. Stephan Lee of Entertainment Weekly’s Shelf Life blog suggested Shailene Woodley for Hazel Grace Lancaster, the narrator, but this would be a similar mistake. Hazel is sick. She wouldn’t look sixteen going on twenty-five going on Playboy. Here are a few actresses are both talented and real-looking enough to take on what would be a hell of a role:

Hazel Grace Lancaster

Elizabeth Olsen

Dakota Fanning

Tavi Gevinson

Tavi’s a fashion blogger, not an actress, but what can’t that girl do? She also have the distinct advantage of being close to Hazel in age. I may just have put her on her because her look and her smart-teenager sassiness remind me of Hazel.

The real dreamboat of the book is, of course, The Boy, Augustus Waters. By swoon-worthy description:

“Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed the molded plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in. Mahogany hair, straight and short. He looked my age, maybe a year older, and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture aggressively poor, one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans…Look, let me just say it: He was hot.”

This hottie would also have to have some great acting chops, as you’d agree if you’d finished the book. Our picks:

Augustus Waters

Aaron Johnson

Anton Yelchin

Matt Prokop

This involved a lot of me Googling “brunette teen actor,” which will be a little embarrassing when the FBI goes through my Internet history. Matt Prokop is Rocket Man from High School Musical 3, so we know he has the charisma. The snap-crackle-pop of energy between Hazel and Gus is what audiences will really need to believe.

Also integral to the story is the reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction:

Peter Van Houten

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Jeff Bridges

Hugh Laurie

There are some other important characters that would make rich roles for the right actor: Isaac, for example, and Hazel’s parents. Who are your picks for Hazel and Gus? Are you excited about the movie, or wish it’d stay as a book?

*I loved this book. It is somehow both lush and spare, with writing so lovely I didn’t notice it until I was moved by it. But I actually have some really complicated thoughts about the piece, and whether it bears more than pedantry and quote-book melodrama. Book club, anyone?