Nicole Kidman
Although the smallest of the key roles in the movie, Kidman's was arguably the most influential since all of the characters are portrayed in reference to their connection with Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway". Whilst nobody doubted the power and strength of Kidman's Oscar-winning performance, many critics do take issue with the fact that the award was for Best Actress in a Lead Role; they felt that she should have been nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category, leaving the Lead Actress nominations to Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, both of whom has considerably more screen time.
Meryl Streep
Dubbed "the best actress of her generation", Streep played Clarissa with a surprisingly endearing blend of strength, stridency, and vulnerability. She shows the strange juxtaposition within Clarissa of happiness and awareness of the passing of time. Streep once said that in order to portray a character she did not concentrate on playing someone different, but on finding the similarities within the differences and finding herself in there. This is what makes her apparent love for a gay ex-partner and and her current female lover tender and convincing.
Julianne Moore
Moore's Laura is a miserable and trapped housewife going through the motions of her life on the outside whilst slowly unraveling on the inside. She conveys a woman just this side of suicidal who wants to escape her everyday life but not the state of being alive. Her frustration is always close to the surface and like Laura, Moore is perfectly beautiful on the outside in the role.
Ed Harris
On the face of it, Harris was a left-field casting choice, more familiar to movie-goers as a stern military man or a dedicated FBI agent type. The role of Richard, a gay man who for many years was hidden in plain sight as the cheating partner to an apparently straight woman, is somewhat of a departure for the decorated actor who plays the role of a man on decline with both toughness and sensitivity, bringing a character who does everything from a place of love to life and towards a tragic death.
John C. Reilly
More familiar as either comedy characters or psychopaths, Reilly plays the traditionally male Dan as a man totally oblivious to the fact that his wife is unfulfilled and miserable.
Stephen Dillane
Dillane is a go-to cast member for any movie casting director seeking to cast a film about the Bloomsbury Set and consequently is incredibly convincing as Virginia's over-protective-slash-domineering husband Leonard whom Dillane plays with the quiet authority of a man who knows he is needed, and also with the air of a man carrying a piece of glassware that is very beautiful, very valuable, and liable to break without warning.
Claire Danes
Claire Danes, pre-"Homeland", was the go-to actress for directors searching for obnoxious and abrasive young women or older teens. Chiefly because of her role in the groundbreaking television series "My So-Called Life", and then for her role as Juliet opposite Leonardo Di Caprio's Romeo, Danes brought both of these facets to her acting personality to the role of Clarissa's rebellious and trenchant daughter Julia.
Miranda Richardson
Miranda Richardson is frequently cast as posh, well-educated and upper class women in period pieces, and is also masterful at turning her supporting roles into the role that is remembered in the movie. As Vanessa, she is true to form and plays Virginia Woolf's sister as the slightly less emotionally volatile sibling but with the capacity to turn from happy to upset in a heartbeat.
Allison Janney
Generally more familiar on either soap-ish roles or as comedy characters (her eponymous role on the sit-com "Mom" shows natural comic timing) Janney is powerful and believable as Clarissa's girlfriend Sally, not having a great deal of screen time but showing the audience why she is so influential in Clarissa's life.
Jack Rovello
Jack "Bruno" Robello was a rising child star at the time of the filming of the movie and was nominated for the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards in 2002 at the age of eighteen.
