Faye Dunaway had proved to be difficult and many actresses had been considered for the role, including Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, Carol Lynley, Leslie Caron, and Natalie Wood. Penn loved Dunaway and managed to convince actor and producer, Warren Beatty, who played Clyde Barrow in the film, that she was right for the part. Besides her relative anonymity, Beatty's concern was her "extraordinary bone structure", which he thought might be inappropriate for Bonnie Parker, a local girl trying to look innocent while she held up smalltown Texas banks. However, he changed his mind after seeing some photographs of Dunaway taken by
Faye Dunaway from all of my heart, and without you, I would not be the same Faye Dunaway." Also in 2014, Dunaway had to pull out of a French drama called "Macadam Stories", in which she was going to play the lead, due to health issues, and was replaced by Isabelle Huppert. In 2016, Dunaway made two rare public appearances at the TCM Classic Film Festival. She hosted a screening of "Network" and also joined in conversation with Ben Mankiewicz for a Q&A session in which she discussed her decades-spanning career. The hour-long interview later aired on TCM as "Faye Dunaway: Live