Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Cast (2024)

The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice cast is an exceptional blend of legacy and new energy. Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder anchor the film as two of cinema's most beloved performers reuniting with a director who helped define their careers. Joining them is Jenna Ortega, who had just completed the smash-hit first season of Tim Burton's Wednesday on Netflix, creating one of the most natural director-actor continuations in recent memory. Catherine O'Hara, consistently one of the most inventive comic performers in any ensemble she joins, brings Delia Deetz back to hilarious life. The new additions — Justin Theroux as Rory, Monica Bellucci as the terrifying Delores, and Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson — each bring their own distinctive energy to the Afterlife sequences, which expand the mythology of Burton's original in inventive and often darkly funny ways.

Supporting & Recurring Cast

About the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Cast

The core returning cast of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice represents one of the more remarkable legacy reunions in recent Hollywood history. Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O'Hara had all gone on to acclaimed careers in the 36 years since the original — Keaton with his Oscar-nominated turn in Birdman, Ryder with her celebrated comeback in Stranger Things, and O'Hara with her BAFTA-winning work in Schitt's Creek — and their chemistry as an ensemble feels both nostalgic and refreshingly alive. Tim Burton's direction treats the returning characters as genuine adults whose lives have moved on in interesting ways, rather than simply freezing them in 1988 amber. Lydia's arc as a woman who has spent decades trying to monetize her connection to the paranormal while simultaneously being haunted by it gives Ryder substantial dramatic material to work with.

The decision to cast Jenna Ortega as Lydia's daughter Astrid was a natural one given her existing creative relationship with Tim Burton from Wednesday, but it also carries its own logic within the film: Ortega brings the same quality of quiet intensity and deadpan wit that made Wednesday Addams compelling, and it works equally well for a character defined by skepticism of her mother's world. Willem Dafoe's Wolf Jackson is one of the film's most purely delightful additions — a send-up of old Hollywood action heroes who finds himself utterly out of his depth in the actual supernatural bureaucracy of the Afterlife. Monica Bellucci, whose role as Delores is essentially the film's most visually disturbing element, provides a genuine edge of menace that prevents the comedy from becoming entirely frothy. Danny Elfman's return to score the sequel ensures that the film's musical identity remains immediately connected to the spirit of the original.

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