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 singer of the rock group The J. Geils Band. At this time, she felt "exhausted from the constant and intense pressures of the work", and decided to pull out of "The Wind and the Lion" (1975), in which she was to costar with Sean Connery, at the last moment to concentrate on her married life. Her next feature was Sydney Pollack's political thriller, "Three Days of the Condor" (1975). Her character was to be held hostage by a CIA analyst, played by Robert Redford, and Dunaway was required to display fear that she might be raped. However, she had difficulty