Cast Of Lovely Bones

Who Was In The Lovely Bones Movie

The 2009 film directed by Peter Jackson had an ensemble cast that some people find interesting and some people don't care about either way. It's based on Alice Sebold's novel, and the casting choices were pretty deliberate even if the movie itself got mixed reviews. I remember watching this back when it came out and going through the credits just to place who was who because some of the supporting roles felt familiar from other things. Ronan plays Susie Salmon, the 14-year-old girl who narrates the story from heaven after being murdered. She was relatively unknown at the time and it was her first major film role. She did a lot of the emotional heavy lifting for the entire movie, which is a tall order for someone who had never really acted before something like this.

Cast Of Lovely Bones Breakdown

Susan Sarandon plays Linda Salmon, Susie's mother. Sarandon went on to get an Oscar nomination for this role, which some people found surprising given how uneven the rest of the film was. Her performance carries a lot of the grief sequences, especially in the second half when everything starts falling apart for the family. Susan actually did quite a lot of prep work for this role. I've read interviews where she mentioned spending time with families who had lost children to understand the different ways people process that kind of loss. The scene where she confronts George Harvey in the climax is probably her most memorable moment in the film. Mark Wahlberg plays Jack Salmon, Susie's father. He's the one who tries to investigate the murder himself, which creates a lot of the dramatic tension in the middle act. Wahlberg tends to play characters who are intense and slightly unhinged, and this fits right into that pattern. The house he builds in the ground in the backyard is one of the more talked-about scenes in the movie.

Stanley Tucci has the role of George Harvey, the serial killer. Tucci makes the character unsettling without making him cartoonish, which is the right call because Harvey is supposed to be someone who looks normal and polite while being deeply wrong. He doesn't have a huge amount of screen time compared to the family members, but he's everywhere in the story since everything revolves around what he did. Michael Imperioli plays Detective Hansberry, the detective assigned to Susie's case. He's there for basically the entire investigation thread and does the standard good-cop routine. Nothing particularly notable about his performance, but he's steady and doesn't draw attention away from the main family drama. Caleb Landry Jones plays Billy Salmon, Susie's younger brother. His character goes through a fairly significant arc over the course of the film, starting off as a kid who misses his sister and gradually becoming more involved in the investigation as he gets older. The time jump in the third act changes how he's portrayed quite a bit.

Saoirse Ronan was about 13 years old when she filmed this and it was early in her career. She had already done Atonement at that point, so she wasn't completely new to sets, but this was still a heavy emotional load for someone her age. She handles the grief scenes reasonably well given her experience level at the time. Julie Walters appears as Sister Rainey, the nun who runs the school Susie attended. She only has a handful of scenes but she makes each one count. Her character represents the institutional side of the story, the adults who failed to notice what was happening right under their noses. I once tried to find a complete cast list for someone who was researching the film for a school project and realized that IMDb and Wikipedia disagree on a couple of the minor credited roles. There are uncredited extra appearances that some databases include and others don't, especially for the neighborhood kids and the basketball team scenes. If you're compiling something official, cross-reference multiple sources because nobody seems to have a definitive version of the full speaking roles list.

The rest of the supporting cast includes Angus McDonald as Ray Singh, Susie's friend who becomes her confidante after her death. Serena Scott Thomas plays Lucy Harvey, George's daughter, who has a small but important role in how the plot resolves. Larry Fessenden shows up as Mr. Harrington, another teacher at the school, which is a pretty brief appearance. One thing people often miss about the casting is how deliberately age-appropriate everyone is. The directors didn't try to cast older actors playing high school students, which was a pretty common practice even back then. This means the romance subplot between Susie and Ray feels more natural because the actors are actually close in age rather than a 25-year-old pretending to be a teenager. It's a small detail but it affects the whole tone of those scenes. The film's budget was around $60 million, which isn't enormous for a Peter Jackson project, and a fair chunk of that went toward the visual effects for the heaven sequences. Some of those effects look dated now, but the cast performances hold up better than the CGI in most cases. If you're watching this today primarily for the acting, focus on Sarandon and Tucci. The rest of the ensemble is serviceable but not memorable.

I should also mention that Gerard McSorley plays Detective Harlan, the second detective on the case after Hansberry. His role is mostly procedural and he functions as a foil to Imperioli's character rather than having much depth of his own. Same basic setup with other law enforcement characters throughout the film, each one filling a specific narrative function without much subtext. There's also Debra Mooney in a small role as Mrs. Lacey, a neighbor who becomes aware of what's happening but doesn't quite know how to respond. Her scenes are short but they highlight the theme of suburban ignorance that runs through the whole story. People saw things but chose not to see them, which is kind of the point of the book and the film both. If you're looking to watch this and want to pay attention to the cast specifically, I'd suggest watching with the audio commentary if you can find it. Jackson and his team talk about some of the casting decisions in there, which gives you more context about why certain actors were chosen over others. The DVD version has it and it's worth skipping through to get those details.

The box office numbers for this were decent but not spectacular, grossing roughly $94 million worldwide against that $60 million budget. So it made its money back but didn't really break out. Most of the critical discussion centered on whether the material could work on screen rather than on individual performances, which is probably why the cast as a whole didn't get much awards attention beyond Sarandon's nomination. I keep coming back to wondering whether the film would have been better with a more established young actress in the Ronan role, but then I watch her scenes again and think she actually works for something like this. She's not a natural performer, which is exactly what you want for a character who's suddenly dead and trying to figure out what happened to her life. A more polished actor might have made Susie seem too aware of herself on camera. That said, the supporting performances from the adult cast are where the film really lives or dies. Tucci is quietly creepy in a way that doesn't rely on makeup or lighting tricks. Sarandon brings real weight to the grief scenes. Wahlberg is probably the weakest link, but that's fair given how much of the middle act relies on him being emotionally unstable and making bad decisions. It's not a tough part to play once you commit to the unhinged approach.

For anyone researching this for whatever reason, the most reliable source for accurate cast information is the American Film Institute catalog entry for the film. It lists every credited actor with their character names and running order. IMDb is fine for quick reference but the AFI listing is the one professionals cite when they need something accurate. I also want to note that the soundtrack by Howard Shore is pretty good even if it's not as celebrated as his Lord of the Rings work. It's a lighter, more melancholic score that suits the material better than something bombastic would have. If you listen to it separately from the film, you'll notice how much of the emotional atmosphere comes from the music rather than the dialogue, which says something about how the film is constructed.