Just as we suspected (we have our sources), Vogue's November cover girl is Rooney Mara, star of the highly anticipated "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
Tonne Goodman did the styling honors, cleverly putting Mara in a Ralph Lauren dress with a beaded dragon up the back. And while we can say the actress looks gorgeous with her slender figure, it doesn't feel quite right... given what she's had to do to get it.
When a waiter appears to take our order, we are all looking at our menus, but I see out of the corner of my eye Fincher nudging Mara. He says with quiet seriousness, "You can eat." I look up to see her reaction. Mara rolls her eyes, and Fincher laughs. "You can have lettuce and a grape. A raisin if you must." She orders a piece of fish and barely touches it. In the book, Salander is described as boyish and awkward, "a pale, anorexic young woman who has hair as short as a fuse..." Noomi Rapace, the magnetic star of the Swedish versions, looked more like Joan Jett.
"One of the things that make our version that much more heartbreaking," says Mara, "is that even though I am playing a 24-year-old, I look much younger. I look like a child." I ask if she had to get unhealthily skinny for the role. She says, "Umm . . . not really."
"It hasn't been too hard for her," Fincher quickly adds.
The result, Van Meter writes, is Mara's total transformation to become Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of the Swedish novel on which the movie's based:
As Fincher talks about the film, his heroine, Mara -- with Salander's awesomely strange hair, bleached eyebrows, and facial piercings -- sits next to him, looking for all the world like a troubled college student who takes too much Adderall.
Troubled college student or high-fashion model, as that's exactly what Mara looks like in the photo shoot, lensed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
The shoot, ultra-skinniness notwithstanding, is lovely, a far cry from the edgy punk-rock image of Rooney on the leaked film poster.
Click over to Vogue.com to read the rest of the Vogue interview and check out more of the stunning pics.
