Finally, the story’s plum roles could be cast. Carey comments, “It’s always been a script that actors have responded to. There was a lot of interest for the part of Marion Cole.” Academy Award-winning actress Kim Basinger was one of those evincing interest.
Hope says, “With Marion, you had to feel that her soul has transcended the bounds of her physical being. She’s afraid to love, because she fears that if she loves and loses again, she would not be able to tolerate it.”
Carey adds, “Kim Basinger has that translucent quality. It was important to cast somebody who wasn’t only beautiful, but who has so much going on, even when she’s in a nearly frozen state.”
Irving sees the character of Marion as “an enigma. She’s shut herself off, but she comes back to life – if only in this detached, yet sexual way – with this boy for this one summer.” He praises the way Basinger used her voice to express the character, admitting, “I hadn’t heard a voice with that kind of sorrow, that kind of grief in it.”
Hope states, “Kim’s performance is incredibly brave because she as an actress is doing what few dare to do: not asking to be liked.”
Williams adds, “The entire point of the movie is a question, not an answer: can you accept what Marion does without judging her? I knew that only a brave actress would take on this role. Kim Basinger understood that Marion’s strength comes, paradoxically, from her having nothing to lose.”
Basinger says that she was most drawn to play Marion for two reasons: working with “Kip [Tod’s nickname to the actors], and [by] Marion’s ‘aloneness.’”
Williams found the actress to be “a revelation. I needed somebody who made you know, even if you didn’t know why she did what she did, that she was doing the best thing possible under her private inner circumstances. When I met Kim, I knew I had found Marion. She knew it, too; she told me she was looking for any excuse not to do the film, because she was afraid of the darkness of the part.
“But that’s what courage is – a perverse reaction to fear. I think it was her fear of the part that slowly drew her in. Marion is so vulnerable, and Kim understands that. She and Marion share an admirable quality; they both do what they believe is right with no apologies or explanations.”
To complement the leading lady, the role of Ted Cole called for an authoritative leading man who could be at once charming and roguish. Hope explains, “Tod always said you have to see the boy within the man. Ted is really just in love with everything around him, and can’t help himself from indulging in the pleasures that surround him.”
Williams notes, “Having lost faith, Ted has become a controller and a manipulator.”
Carey adds, “You also have to believe that he is a successful writer of children’s books but also a failed writer; irresistible to women; also a great dad. You also have to believe that at one point they had been so forceful together as a couple. We always knew that we wanted Jeff Bridges.” The Door in the Floor reunited Bridges with Basinger, whom he had starred opposite 17 years prior, in Robert Benton’s comedy Nadine. Irving was also already an acquaintance of the actor’s, having worked “with Jeff for some years on my adaptation of A Son Of the Circus; that screenplay is still a work in progress. He’s always been my first choice to play the Missionary [in that adaptation]. I know the meticulousness and obsession with detail that he brings to a character, so it was no surprise to see Jeff throw himself into the part of Ted. He embraced him.”
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