Cast and Characters (Blow-Up) Blow-Up (1966)
| Role | Actor | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Thomas, the photographer | David Hemmings | Antonioni's discovery, modeled loosely on David Bailey and the broader Bailey-Donovan-Duffy "Black Trinity" of London fashion photographers |
| Jane | Vanessa Redgrave | Coming off Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966); on the cusp of major stardom when shooting began |
| Patricia | Sarah Miles | Bill's partner; the print's first outside reader |
| Bill | John Castle | Thomas's neighbor and the painter who articulates the film's central principle |
| The Blonde | Jane Birkin | First credited screen appearance; uncredited in original release |
| The Brunette | Gillian Hills | Already known for Beat Girl (1960); also uncredited in the original release |
| Verushka | Veruschka von Lehndorff | The era's most photographed model; appears as herself |
| Ron | Peter Bowles | Thomas's publisher |
| The Antique-Shop Owner (young) | Susan Brodrick | Wants to sell up and move to Morocco |
| The Antique-Shop Owner (old) | Harry Hutchinson | "No landscapes." |
| The Mimes | Julian Chagrin and Claude Chagrin (lead players) | The Rag-Week troupe at the opening and the tennis-court climax |
| The Yardbirds (themselves) | Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Keith Relf, et al. | Performing "Stroll On" at the Ricky-Tick |
| The Older Man in the Park | Ronan O'Casey | Jane's companion; the body |
Thomas
Thomas is a successful Swinging-London fashion photographer who lives between two professional registers — predatory glamour shoots in his Cheyne Walk studiob5 b7 and predatory documentary work in costume at southeast-London doss-houses.b1 b4 He runs his life through a small private network of agents, drivers, and dispatchers (call sign Blue 439),b3 buys interesting visual things on impulse (a wooden propeller for eight pounds),b17 and treats people, parks, and dead bodies as available material. Hemmings was an unknown stage actor when Antonioni cast him; the film made him an international star overnight. See David Hemmings.
Jane
Jane is the woman in the park — a younger lover (or accomplice) to a much older grey-haired man.b14 After Thomas photographs them embracing through the wire fence, she pursues him,b15 finds his studio, and tries to recover the film.b20 Redgrave's choices here are tiny and exact: the slight shift in her shoulders when she realizes she is being shot, the unselfconscious stretch she does in front of Thomas's window, the line "you've never seen me."b15 See Vanessa Redgrave.
Patricia
Patricia is Bill's partner who lives downstairs.b9 She and Thomas have a charged, low-temperature current running between them throughout the film. After the midpoint, she is the only person who actually looks at the print of the body — and the line she gives the picture, "looks like one of Bill's paintings,"b35 is the film's most quietly devastating moment. See Sarah Miles.
Bill
Bill is the painter next door whose statement of method at minute 17 — "afterwards I find something to hang on to. Like that... like that leg. Then it sorts itself out and adds up. It's like finding a clue in a detective story" — is the film's pre-statement of the enlargement principle.b8 See John Castle.
The Blonde and the Brunette
The two teenage girls who push their way into the studio asking to model are dispatched offhand at minute 20b10 and return at minute 70 — at which point Thomas, mid-call to Ron about the murder, lets them in and ends up wrestling them on a roll of unspooled purplish-blue backdrop paper.b30 b31 Jane Birkin (later iconic for Je t'aime... moi non plus with Serge Gainsbourg) makes her first credited screen appearance; Gillian Hills was already known from Beat Girl (1960) and would later appear in A Clockwork Orange (1971). See Jane Birkin.
Verushka
Veruschka von Lehndorff plays herself in the film's most famous fashion-shoot scene. By 1966 she was the most photographed model in the world. Antonioni asked her to "make love to the camera," which the staging takes literally. See The Verushka Cameo and Mod Fashion.
Ron
Ron, played by Peter Bowles, is Thomas's publisher — the man who is editing the doss-house bookb19 and would in principle be the channel through which the murder photographs would reach the press. By the pot-party sequence, the channel has gone dreamy: "I'm not a photographer."b40