Cast and Characters (The Princess Bride) The Princess Bride (1987)
Principal Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Cary Elwes | Westley / The Dread Pirate Roberts / The Man in Black |
| Robin Wright | Princess Buttercup |
| Mandy Patinkin | Inigo Montoya |
| Wallace Shawn | Vizzini |
| André the Giant | Fezzik |
| Chris Sarandon | Prince Humperdinck |
| Christopher Guest | Count Rugen (the six-fingered man) |
| Billy Crystal | Miracle Max |
| Carol Kane | Valerie |
| Peter Falk | The Grandfather |
| Fred Savage | The Grandson |
| Mel Smith | The Albino |
| Peter Cook | The Impressive Clergyman |
| Anne Dyson | The Queen |
| Willoughby Gray | The King |
| Margery Mason | The Ancient Booer |
Cary Elwes as Westley
Westley is the farm boy who answers every command with "as you wish," sails off to make his fortune, and returns three years later as the Dread Pirate Roberts — a single-operator pirate identity built for one purpose, recovering Buttercup. Cary Elwes was twenty-four when the film shot, with English stage training and a few supporting film roles behind him. Rob Reiner cast him after seeing him in Lady Jane (1986).
"He had to be young, romantic and athletic. And he had to be funny. Cary was the only actor who had all those qualities." — Rob Reiner, Vanity Fair (2012)
Elwes did most of his own swordwork for The Inigo Montoya Duel and trained for months alongside Mandy Patinkin under fight masters Bob Anderson and Peter Diamond.
Robin Wright as Princess Buttercup
Wright was twenty-one and known almost entirely for the soap opera Santa Barbara when Rob Reiner cast her. Buttercup is the film's still center — the loved object whose fidelity makes the rescue worth doing. The performance has often been read as too passive, but the strength of it is what she does not do: she does not love Humperdinck, does not dissemble, does not negotiate. When she catches the four-ships lie she names him a coward.b29
"She was so beautiful, but it was more than that. She had a quality, a kind of inner radiance." — Rob Reiner, Vanity Fair (2012)
Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya
The Spanish swordsman who has spent twenty years hunting the six-fingered man who killed his father. Patinkin — primarily a Broadway actor, fresh off Sunday in the Park with George — built the role around the rehearsed sentence and the grief beneath it. He has said publicly that he played Inigo's father as his own father, who had recently died of cancer; the climactic line "I want my father back, you son of a bitch" has been called the most personal acting choice in the film.
"When that scene came up, when I jam the sword into Christopher Guest, the six-fingered man, the line is, 'I want my father back, you son of a bitch.' And I felt in my mind that if I killed this six-fingered character, then cancer would be killed. That's why I really wanted to kill that guy. And it gave me a peace in my mind that I had killed the thing that killed my father." — Mandy Patinkin, The Hollywood Reporter (2017)
Wallace Shawn as Vizzini
The Sicilian crime boss who runs the kidnap team and dies at the picnic table.b14 Shawn — a playwright (Aunt Dan and Lemon) and the lead of My Dinner with André (1981) — has often described his terror at being cast in a role originally meant for a more obvious comic, but his line readings ("inconceivable!") have become more quoted than the role's screen time would predict.
André the Giant as Fezzik
The Bulgarian-trained French wrestler André René Roussimoff was promoted by the WWF as the most famous giant in the world. He was approximately seven foot four and three hundred pounds, and his health was already failing during the shoot — chronic back pain from acromegaly required a body double and rigging support for the wrestling scene with Westley. The voice has been described by critics as the film's secret weapon: a high, soft, shockingly tender register at odds with the body. André died in 1993 at age forty-six. (wikipedia)
Chris Sarandon as Prince Humperdinck
Humperdinck is the film's villain in the realist sense — he is what an arranged-power monarch actually looks like, a man who books a war the way another man books a wedding. Sarandon plays the part without camp; the velvet menace of the bedroom negotiation with Buttercup is the performance's spine.b22
Christopher Guest as Count Rugen
The six-fingered man who killed Inigo's father and built the Machine. Christopher Guest — a year out from This Is Spinal Tap (1984), which he co-wrote and starred in — plays Rugen as a tired bureaucrat of cruelty. The fake six-fingered prosthetic on his right hand was a practical-effects glove built by the makeup department. The duel with Inigo is one of the most-cited revenge sequences in modern American film.
Billy Crystal and Carol Kane as Miracle Max and Valerie
Crystal and Kane appear for one extended scene late in the film and steal the picture from inside it. Crystal — a 1980s comedy headliner just before When Harry Met Sally... (1989) — wore four hours of latex makeup daily and improvised more than was scripted. Reiner has reported having to leave the set to keep from spoiling takes by laughing aloud.b33
"It was so funny that I had to leave. I was crying. He was making me wet myself." — Rob Reiner, Vanity Fair (2012)
Peter Falk as the Grandfather
Falk — by 1987 already iconic for Columbo — plays the grandfather as the figure he had been for two decades on television: a rumpled, gentle authority you trust because he has seen everything already. The performance is the film's binding agent. The "as you wish" he gives the grandson at the door is the structural payoff of the whole film.b40
Fred Savage as the Grandson
Savage was eleven when the film shot; The Wonder Years premiered the following year and would make him a household name. The grandson's arc — from interrupting the kissing to asking the grandfather to come back tomorrow — tracks the audience and is the film's third protagonist.