Dramatis Personae: The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jane Eyre

Often, when reading a novel, I choose to have the characters portrayed by faces and voices (actors, essentially) that I know well. I don't just go substituting any old actor/actress that I admire, tossing out the author's description of the character, though. Instead, using that description I can often find an artist physically fitting and capable of portraying them. It can be funny, too, sometimes, when I use actors from wholly separate generations in stories and scenes together.
Now, I don't do this for every novel; most of the characters are painted in my imagination by the author. But,  for instance, if it is a novel of which I have seen a film adaptation beforehand, I have many times used the actors from said film - such as with the Harry Potter series, and the Twilight Saga, Bram Stoker's Dracula, His Dark Materials, Solaris, The Lord of the Rings, etc.
Typically, when not based on a film, the novels in which this substitution of actors occurs are epic ones, the sprawling generational story in which characters appear repeatedly, usually what is now considered one of "the classics." I've only just started writing these down, as I think they are fascinating on many levels.
First, I wonder if this is some sort of accidental development in the human imagination due to over-saturation of television and films in the last couple generations. I honestly doubt anyone was doing this in the Elizabethan era - substituting their favorite stage actors for every novel they read - and am not entirely sure that I have any company at all, even today, in this regard.
Secondly, it is a tradition of mine, if I have managed to avoid it during reading, to watch a/the film adaptation of these novels immediately upon finishing them. As you can imagine, it is often very dismal work. Coming right out of these amazing worlds, replete with stunning linguistic description and in-depth character analysis, it is quite depressing to see the scrambling together a bunch of actors who seem to have not even read the source material, sit through a screen-writer's "costume drama/period piece" script who has clearly misunderstood the text, and/or to see the plot slaughtered and the entire story edited in fettering it to one specific genre. Therefore, my casting is useful also in simply saying, "These are the actors who should play your characters, if the novel was free of its time constraints and selfish, narrow-minded financial backers. Here is your perfect cast."
So, without further ado (this has become much longer than I anticipated), I offer the first of many to come: the dramatis personae of Thomas Hardy's, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Charlotte Bronte's, Jane Eyre.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Michael Henchard – Hugh Jackman

Elizabeth-Jane – Unknown British actress

Donald Farfrae – Johnny Depp

Susan Henchard – Nicole Kidman

Lucetta – Marion Cotillard

Richard Newson – David Thewlis

Grower, the Banker – Robert Hardy

The Doctor – Jim Broadbent

JANE EYRE

Mrs. Reed: Imagination

Mr. Brocklehurst: David Warner

Miss Temple: Maggie Smith

Jane Eyre: Claire Danes / Imagination

Edward Fairfax Rochester: Michael Fassbender / Imagination

Mrs. Fairfax: Kerry Walker

Blanche Ingram: Angelina Jolie

Eliza Reed: Uma Thurman

Georgiana Reed: Kirsten Dunst

Mr. Mason: Imagination

Mr. Briggs: Alan Rickman (Greatest bit part and cameo ever)

Bertha Antoinetta Mason: Imagination / Traditional vampire (in my reading, she really was a vampire)

St. John Rivers: Robert Pattinson

Rosamond Oliver: Natalie Portman