Age: 50
female
Alicia Roanne Witt is an American actress, singer-songwriter, and pianist. "Talking by age two and reading by the age of four", Witt has been described as a child prodigy. Her acting talent was recognized by director David Lynch discovered her when he heard her recite Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on the television show That's Incredible! at age 5. This led Lynch to cast her in the role of Alia, the "flame-haired" sister of Paul Atreides, in Dune (1984). She turned 8 during filming. He would begin working with her in film and television even before Witt earned her high school equivalency credential (at age 14). She did undergraduate work in piano at Boston University and competed nationally.
A Confederacy of Dunces follows the misadventures of protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy, overweight, misanthropic, self-styled scholar who lives at home with his mother. He is an educated but slothful 30-year-old man living in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans who, in his quest for employment, has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters. Toole wrote the novel in 1963 during his last few months in Puerto Rico. It is hailed for its accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects. Toole based Reilly in part on his college professor friend Bob Byrne. Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial, and Reilly mirrored him in these respects. The character was also based on Toole himself, and several personal experiences served as inspiration for passages in the novel. While at Tulane, Toole filled in for a friend at a job as a hot tamale cart vendor, and worked at a family owned and operated clothing factory. Both of these experiences were later adopted into his fiction.
