20 Movie Characters Completely Different From Their Source Material

When the topic of greatest movie of all time crops up, there will invariably be the mention of The Shawshank Redemption, widely regarded as as close to perfect as a movie can get. Arguably made even more impressive by the fact that its source material is just 103 pages long.

Who could have predicted that Stephen King's Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption would go on to be such a huge part of popular culture? The film is faithful to the story in a lot of ways, though of course there are differences, with some of the most noticeable coming with the two chief characters.

Andy Dufresne is chubby and short in the book, and certainly not the "tall drink of water" as played by the 6'4" Tim Robbins. Then of course, there is Red, who was played wonderfully by Morgan Freeman, while being white, Irish, and red-haired in the book.

This answers the question of why Red was in fact called Red, something that was cleverly alluded to in the film with a subtly meta answer. When Freeman's version of the character was asked why he was called Red, he said it may be because he is Irish. Those who haven't read the book won't have realised just how accurate a statement that is.