Here’s a list (hopefully ever- growing) of red-haired people who inspired fictional
characters of novels and cartoons.
1)
Livia Svevo: wife of the
Italian writer Italo Svevo, she inspired the character of Anna Livia Plurabelle
in James Joyce's
Finnegans Wake.
2)
Larissa Mikhailovna Reissner: this beautiful Bolshevik is said to have inspired the character of Lara in Boris Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago.
3)
Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald: a British naval officer of the Royal Navy, he inspired the figures of C. S.
Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey.
4)
William Lamport: according to some historians, this Scottish pirate and adventurer inspired the character of Zorro, created by
Johnston McCulley.
5)
Palle Huld: his journey around the world at the age of 15 in 1928 reportedly inspired Belgian cartoonist Hergé to create Tintin.
6)
Evelyn Nesbit: this beautiful chorus girl is said to be the inspiration for Anne of Green Gables.
7)
Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe: she is one of the main inspirations for the character of the duchesse de Guermantes in Marcel
Proust's
À la recherche du temps perdu. Countess Greffulhe and her family, who
inspired several of the characters in
La recherche, played a major role in the
genesis of the work and in the discovery of the "magic" name of
Guermantes.
8)
Marie Duplessis: the lover Alexandre Dumas the younger, she was the inspiration for Marguerite Gautier, the main character of
La dame aux camélias.
9)
Julie d'Aubigny: better known as Mademoiselle Maupin or La Maupin, Théophile Gautier loosely based the title character, Madeleine
de Maupin, of his novel
Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) on her.
10)
Brendan Bracken, 1st Viscount Bracken: many literary academics believe that it was Bracken who inspired George Orwell to create the character Big Brother in his
novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
11)
Sam Brown: his clash with innkeeper Henry van Sickle is,
by some accounts, the inspiration for the fictional short story by Dorothy M. Johnson The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
12) Sabrina Sidney: her story is said to have
inspired G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion. Strong parallels have also been drawn between Sidney's upbringing and two novels of 1871: Henry James's Watch and Ward, and Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm.
13) Elisabeth Bergner: she is considered by several
critics to be the inspiration for the character of Margo Channing in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's classic film, All About Eve. The character of Dora Martin in the novel Mephisto by Klaus Mann is reportedly based on her.
14) Giovanni Battista Belzoni: George Lucas based his Indiana Jones on him.
15) Jane Clemens: Mark Twain based the character of
Aunt Polly, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, on his mother Jane.
16) Beulah Annan: she inspired the character of Roxie
Hart, from the play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins. The play was adapted into a 1927 silent film, a 1975 stage musical, and a 2002 movie musical, all with that title, and a 1942 romantic comedy film, Roxie Hart.
17) Misia Sert: Marcel Proust used Sert as the prototype for the characters of "Princess Yourbeletieff" and "Madame Verdurin" in his roman à clef À la recherche du temps perdu.
