That includes original American Psycho star Chloë Sevigny—still considered, along with Zoë Kravitz, to be one of movie-making’s top performers whose name you have to copy-and-paste because the e with the umlaut over it is hard to remember how to type—who apparently pitched herself to Guadagnino to reprise her role as Jean, her character from the 2000 film. Sevigny was talking to IndieWire (about her new indie films Magic Farm and Bonjour Tristesse) when her frequent collaborator Guadagnino came up. Sevigny says that, when she heard that her Bones And All director was tackling American Psycho, “I pitched to him that I should play Jean again, and that they do that reverse-aging on me. I thought that would be something that he would be into, conceptually having the same actress play the same part.” Which, honestly, does sound trippy in a way that might appeal to Guadagnino. (He had a lot of fun playing with the disconnect between actor and identity with his Suspiria remake, famously making up a whole fake actor to hide one of Tilda Swinton’s roles.) “But I don’t know,” Sevigny said of Guadagnino’s reaction. “He said he was going to think of something else for me.”
Actors with less obvious Guadagnino connections have also been blatantly campaigning for a part in the film: Patrick Schwarzenegger is apparently willing to spend some of his recent White Lotus heat to pursue a role in the movie, presumably as Patrick Bateman himself. Schwarzenegger has been trying to manifest this particular idea for a minute, honestly: Per THR, Schwarzenegger did a Vanity Fair photo shoot in 2021 (before Guadagnino’s remake had even been hatched) where he explicitly cosplayed as Bateman, and has responded to multiple news articles about Guadagnino’s plans with comments like “My dream” and “I’d love nothing more.” It’s not clear if this kind of public campaigning ever actually moves the needle for an actor, but it does admittedly have a certain “just saw the world’s most beautiful business card and must obsessively destroy its owner” neediness that probably can’t hurt Schwarzenegger’s chances.
