In The Lion and the Eagle, the first of my six novels, I didn’t want Tom Cruise to be the pattern for the major character, a 19-year-old Revolutionary War hero. I was writing ten years ago and Cruise was still qualified to squeeze into the role of a late teen, though just barely.
The trouble was, I couldn’t get the guy out of my mind. Love him or hate him, Tom Cruise was such a forceful character he took over the role without my permission. Such is the power of the movies to inflict their box office heroes and heroines on our imaginations.
Is it wrong for a beginning writer to rely on movie characters this way? Not if it enables you to spring a character to life. Of course, you’ll want to establish their originality by contributing a scar or a birthmark to spoil that perfect face, a limp from a war wound, or an angry way of looking at you stemming from a childhood beating by a stepmother.
But the movies are Big. And their stars are Huge. And if it will help get a story rolling, why not?
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