To those of us who have enjoyed Stieg Larsson's obscenely successful Millennium books as an opportunity to wrap ourselves up in an exotic Scandinavian world of Nazis, spy rings and all-powerful hacker cliques, the news that Hollywood is set to adapt the films into a Daniel Craig-starring trilogy raised a fair few eyebrows. Not least was the hiring of the rather wholesome-looking Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, the razor-sharp heroine of the series. While Noomi Rapace never quite looked the part either in the Swedish film versions of the trilogy, Mara seemed a little too ... well, gorgeous to portray a character depicted in the books as tiny and sparrowlike.
Thanks to fan site rooney-mara.com we can now – perhaps – put those fears to rest. The site has published pictures of Mara as Salander, complete with dyed jet black hair, on the set of the first film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. She looks very, very strange indeed. It's possible the photographs were taken from an unfortunate angle, or in poor light, but, if not, no one can accuse director David Fincher of having glammed up Salander for the US market. She looks like death warmed up.
