Coraline (film) - Cast

Cast

• Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones, a brave, clever, curious 11-year-old girl. She is aggravated by not being taken seriously by (in her opinion) crazy adults, people constantly mistaking her name for Caroline, and her mundane and bland life. Gaiman describes her as "full of 'vim' and 'spunk' and all those wonderful old-fashioned words."
• Teri Hatcher as Mel Jones, Coraline's busy mother, and the Other Mother. In the film, Mel has a brace around her neck from a truck crash Coraline mentioned; the Other Mother has a turtleneck jumper instead. Mel is a writer working on a gardening catalog. She loves her daughter, but is very busy and doesn't always give her the attention that Coraline thinks she needs. The Other Mother is the creator of the other world and its inhabitants, she can also transform her herself into different people. Teri Hatcher describes Other Mother as the seemingly "perfect mom, because she's a perfect cook and has the perfect answer to every question, and later on she becomes quite monstrous." Her true form is a spider-like witch with a bony face and hands fashioned from sewing needles. The three ghost children refer to her as "the beldam", an archaic word meaning "good lady" but used to refer to a "hag" or a "witch".
• Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French as Miss April Spink and Miss Miriam Forcible respectively, a pair of retired burlesque actresses. They own several Scottish Terriers (including the stuffed remains of their dead ones) and talk in theater jargon. The Other Spink and Forcible are young, beautiful, Shakespeare-quoting acrobats and later they merge as a green and pink monster made out of taffy and the dogs turn into dog-bats.
• John Hodgman as Charlie Jones, Coraline's father, and the Other Father. Hodgman described him as "the kind of guy who walks around a banana peel and falls into a manhole." Author Neil Gaiman describes him as a man who "does that thing that parents do when they embarrass their kids and somehow think they're being cool." The Other Father is a singer-pianist, as well as a gardener. He acts like the Other Mother's slave, showing a scared and traumatized attitude. However, he still seems to retain some aspects of Coraline's real father, repeatedly stating that the Other Mother is forcing him to do this and that, and that he truly does not want to hurt Coraline.
  • John Linnell as Other Father's singing voice
• Ian McShane as Mr. Bobinsky (his full name is Sergei Aleksandr Bobinsky, and friends call him Mr. B.), one of Coraline's neighbors. He is a blue-skinned Russian giant who once trained as a gymnast and lives on a steady diet of beets. While not explained in the film, his blue skin is due to his time as a Liquidator, for which he wears a Hero of Chernobyl medal on his "wife beater". Coraline's mother believes him to be a drunk. The Other Bobinsky is the ringmaster of a circus of rats disguised as jumping mice.
• Keith David as The Cat, a mysterious, nameless black cat from Coraline's world who appears and disappears at will and has the ability to speak in the Other World. He forms a bond with Coraline and acts as her guide and mentor throughout her journey.
• Robert Bailey, Jr. as Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat, the geeky, nervous 11-year-old grandson of Coraline's landlady. Wybie is a character introduced for the film adaptation so that the viewer "wouldn't have a girl walking around, occasionally talking to herself." Though Coraline finds him creepy and regularly insults him, the two end up becoming good friends. The Other Wybie has been rendered incapable of speech by the Other Mother as she thought Coraline would prefer him that way.
• Caroline Crawford as Mrs. Lovat, Wybie's presumably overprotective grandmother and the owner of the Pink Palace Apartments. She originally grew up in the old Victorian mansion with her twin sister who mysteriously vanished because of the Other Mother. Believing that someone "stole" her sister, Mrs. Lovat moved out of her childhood home and divided it into three apartments, which she rents. Afraid of the Beldam claiming another child, she did not allow any tenants with children to rent the apartments. However, for some reason she rents to Coraline and her parents, perhaps because it is illegal to discriminate against families with children in the real-world Oregon, she really needed the money (this takes place after the economy went downhill) or was unaware that Coraline was there initially (it is not unheard of if parents lie about not having a child in exchange for housing), or she could have even thought it was now safe, nor does she allow Wybie to enter it.