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 a year turning down projects. She passed on a role in Alfred Hitchcock's final film, the comic thriller "Family Plot", which she later lamented. She returned to the screen in 1976 with the Holocaust drama "Voyage of the Damned". The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939. That same year, Dunaway appeared in the Paddy Chayefsky-scripted satire "Network" as the scheming TV executive Diana Christensen, a ruthless woman who will do anything for higher ratings. She loved the script and later said this was "the