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 the ass", but added that he had "never known an actress to take work as seriously as she does. I tell you, she is a maniac." Bette Davis described Dunaway as the worst person she had ever worked with in an interview with Johnny Carson in 1988, calling her "totally impossible", "uncooperative', and "very unprofessional". Dunaway denied Davis' claims in her autobiography, writing "Watching her, all I could think of was that she seemed like someone caught in a death throe, a final scream against a fate over which no one has control. I was just the target of her