Oh boy oh boy. OK, we know it's TV not movies, but HBO's twisted fantasy A Game Of Thrones pilot has got itself a hell of a cast, with Lena Headey joining the line-up today as the thoroughly unscrupulous Cersei Lannister, a woman who's not the sort you want to trust with your last Rolo.
Cersei is a queen who cheats on her husband, has a thing for incest, approves of murder, assassination, conspiracy and treason if it will safeguard her own status and treats her friends and enemies much alike: as tools to be used in her quest for power and safety. She's not much of a mother either, and she kicks small puppies for fun*. It's a role that Headey, with the hard-edges she showed so well in The Sarah Connor Chronicles and 300, should slip right into. Admittedly, Cersei's described as blonde, so there may be wigs / hair dye to get into, but otherwise it seems like ideal casting.
To explain where Cersei fits in, she's married to Mark Addy's King Robert, elder sister to Peter Dinklage's Tyrion Lannister and the elder twin of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's Jamie Lannister. Sean Bean's Eddard Stark is not among her friends and family, so expect sparks to fly there.
Should the David Benioff-scripted, Tom McCarthy-directed pilot go to series - and we're really hoping it's good and it will - Cersei's a consistent and continuing role, so this could replace Sarah Connor in Headey's plans for some years to come.
*Probably. That's not in the books to date, but it's very much implied.