The filmmakers turned their attention to casting. director Shainberg’s first choice for the role of Diane was Nicole Kidman. “I adore Nicole and would think of her for any movie. In a certain way, to think of Nicole for Arbus doesn’t seem particularly obvious given that they’re so physically different,” he allows. “But what I cared about was does she feel like Arbus? Can she emotionally go through the journey that the character we’ve made up, who’s called ‘Diane Arbus,’ goes through during the course of the film? Nicole has all of that subtlety, emotional availability, mystery and tenderness, all of the things that the character needed.”

It seemed like a long shot, given Kidman’s busy schedule and the relatively small scale of FUR. Nonetheless, Timmermann began making calls. As it happened, her friend, acting coach Susan Batson, was on her way to Australia to work with Kidman. Timmermann gave Batson the script, emphasizing that Batson shouldn’t do anything with the script unless she herself loved it. In fact, Batson did love the script, and so did Kidman.

“It was like nothing I’d ever read before, which of course attracted me,” Kidman remarks. Her research on Arbus further piqued her interest. “The story is a metaphor for so many other things, in terms of a woman finding her creativity, the way in which we’re attracted to the unknown. And I think this is a beautiful love story, a tragic love story --but it’s also a story in which Lionel unleashes things in Diane and helps her to unravel in a way that she never would have if she hadn’t encountered him. It’s so wonderful that he lives upstairs. Part of the strangeness of the film is you start to wonder, does he really even exist?”

Kidman had seen Shainberg’s SECRETARY, which she admired and “thought was a great piece of work because it was original, disturbing and sexy.” She was eager to work with the director, as was Robert Downey Jr., who was cast as Lionel. “Knowing it was Shainberg directing, having seen SECRETARY --and then meeting him really more than anything else --made me want to do the film,” Downey explains. “I really hit it off with Shainberg. And then once Nicole came aboard, I knew this was going to be a really cool project.”

Shainberg felt Downey was the ideal person to realize Lionel as a sophisticated, confident and charismatic man. Says the director, “I had no interest in portraying the conventional sad, lonely, withdrawn, fearful, isolated freak; the guy who has been so mistreated by the world that he’s terrified of contact. From my point of view, that’s not who this guy is. Lionel is sexy. He’s a man, a strong man, and I wanted the relationship between him and Diane to be wonderful. So Lionel had to have some beauty to him. I didn’t want somebody brooding and heavy, because Diane’s discovering something from him that has many aspects, including a kind of playfulness.

“What I did want from Lionel,” he continues, “was tenderness, sensitivity, unpredictability, openness, surprise, and love. And all that is Downey. You look at him and somehow he moves you. With the soulfulness of his eyes, the elegance of his movement and his sheer inventiveness, he was the perfect choice for Lionel.”

Downey describes Lionel as “somebody who’s been a freak in show business for as long as he can remember, who is kind of retired. I believe he’s coming to this point where he’s at peace with the autumn of his life. At this point, he chooses to impart some sort of creative mystery to this girl, Diane Arbus, who he’s basically fallen in love with at first sight.”