Rooney Mara's extreme 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' makeover
Have the right haircut, numerous piercings, and bleached eyebrows convincingly turned Rooney Mara into the Stieg Larsson heroine, Lisbeth Salander?

The image: Last summer, in one of the most "closely watched casting searches for an actress in years," Rooney Mara won the pivotal role of Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. Then the debate began: Could Mara — a relative unknown who beat out Scarlett Johansson and Ellen Page for the role — embody the prickly Salander character? Did her brief appearance as a dimpled (if uncompromising) Harvard coed in Fincher's The Social Network offer any clues? Now, at last, fans get to see Mara in character, provocatively posing as the punky, bisexual hacker on the cover of W.
The reaction: Mara's Scandinavian goth makeover is "impressive," says Drew McWeeny at HitFix. "I honestly don't see the girl from the start of The Social Network at all." Yes, "it's definitely convincing and a little bit scary in all the right ways," though the cover of W is an "unlikely choice for a sneering cyberpunk" to make her debut," says Kyle Buchanan in New York. "But let's go with it!" No, "I'm not buying it," says Jason Rehel at the National Post. Salander is supposed to be an outsider in every way, but Fincher and his team have interpreted that as "a pastiche of the last 30 year's worth of subcultures." I guess "that's the magic of Hollywood, folks."
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Frauds: ‘fantastically stylish’ crime heist caper is a ‘triumph’
The Week Recommends Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker play a pair of ex-cons planning one last job
-
The struggles of Aston Martin
In the Spotlight The car manufacturer, famous for its association with the James Bond franchise, is ‘running out of road’
-
The end of ‘golden ticket’ asylum rights
The Explainer Refugees lose automatic right to bring family over and must ‘earn’ indefinite right to remain