Who else could have played Loretta in Moonstruck?

The project was originally developed for Sally Field, which seems insane in retrospect.

Did Debra Winger ever give a transformative performance? Most of the stuff I"ve seen her in she was kind of her usual film image.

Sort of makes you appreciate Cher in this. She did an accent, was repressed and glum i the beginning and then joyful at the end.

Cher and only Cher

Barbra Streisand Edie Falco

G, M, Lange or Sigourney could have all done it. Not sure if they would have brought enough comedy to it though. It really was a perfect role for Cher's talent. Too bad she didn't continue to expand her range. With this Silkwood and Come Back Jimmy Dean, Mask she really had a great start.

Even Witches of Eastwick gave her that great monologue she delivered perfectly where she tells off Nicholson (and you smell!)

The right actress needs to be:

- believable as an old maid with a pushy family who’s given up on life enough to get engaged to a loser

- crazy enough to sell the table-clearing sex scene and the wolf/hand talk

- frumpy but beautiful enough to get a makeover and go to the opera

I don't think Lange, G, or M could have played it. They were so patrician and not ethnic.

Kathleen Turner, but once with Nicolas Cage was more than enough for her...

Could Geena Davis have pulled it off? Madonna?

Geena Davis probably. (she didn't really breakthrough though until the next year.)

She did some movie (Angie I think?) where she played a Brooklyn girl. Yes good call the more I type she would have been a good choice if it was made a few years later.

Madonna? Doubt it. She's so ill at ease in films.

I think Madonna was still too young and sexy to play a slightly past her prime woman who worked for undertakers.

I'm kinda digging the idea of Rhea Perlman having a breakout movie role.

Bea Arthur. Loretta was a Dorothy.

Sally Field is last in the poll yet she was in talks to do it prior to Cher getting it.

I can't picture Sally Field in Moonstruck, but I can definitely see Cher starring in Not Without My Daughter.

I can definitely see Cher in "Without My Daughter"

I don’t think Cher was that great in it. I mean, she couldn’t make me buy that any straight woman would find Nicholas Cage attractive.