Cast
Ansel Elgort as Miles "Baby":A young getaway driver with an intense passion for music. Elgort regarded the character as an innocent "younger than his years, deep down". Edgar Wright and the producers at Working Title Films began contemplating the lead role well before they obtained funding for Baby Driver. Elgort, John Boyega, and Logan Lerman were among a raft of potential candidates considered for star billing. Elgort auditioned for the part because he found the screenplay compelling. He auditioned several times, but was hired based on a taped audition where he lip synced and danced to the Commodores' 1977 single "Easy". Wright was so impressed that the song was added to the film's soundtrack. The writer-director explained his selection of Elgort: "There's an element of an old soul in Ansel and that was something I thought connected with what I had already written."
Hudson Meek as young Baby
Lily James as Debora: A waitress employed at Bo's Diner who becomes Baby's girlfriend. Emma Stone was an early candidate for the role during development.
Kevin Spacey as "Doc": The mysterious kingpin of an Atlanta-based crime syndicate to whom Baby owes a debt. Spacey's involvement in Baby Driver was announced in the press in November 2015.
Jon Hamm as Jason "Buddy" van Horn: A laid-back criminal, former stockbroker and the husband of Darling. He and his wife are both members of Doc's crew of bank robbers and Buddy was brought into the criminal underworld by a drug habit. His impulsive decisions are the result of a mid-life crisis. Wright envisioned Buddy as a strong, suave, handsome character à la Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen) in The Getaway (1972) and Jack Foley (George Clooney) in Out of Sight (1998), yet much more sinister. Hamm is the only actor in Baby Driver whose character was written specifically for them, as Wright is a longtime friend and fan of his. The two men first met at a Saturday Night Live afterparty in 2008. Hamm took part in a table read several years before Baby Driver was commissioned by a studio.
Eiza González as Monica "Darling" Costello: Buddy's young, vivacious wife and the only woman in Doc's heist crew. She and Buddy form an intensely intimate, Bonnie and Clyde-esque pairing. Describing her as a vapid "crook space-cadet woman who has no attachment to reality", the actress joined the production in December 2015.
Jamie Foxx as Leon "Bats" Jefferson III: Doc's particularly sadistic, ruthless henchman, who has little regard for the people in his way. Foxx was a casting choice recommended to Wright, although he had reservations and felt the actor would not be enthusiastic about a supporting role. Foxx was fascinated with the film's artistic direction, and joined the project thanks to the support of Quentin Tarantino. He modeled Bats after a longtime friend he first met at a Los Angeles comedy club in his youth.
Jon Bernthal as Griffin "Griff": One of Doc's toughest henchmen responsible for the security of his heist crew. Bernthal believed criminals were too often stereotyped as incompetent in news media. Therefore, to prepare for his role, the actor consulted with real-life career criminals to get a better grasp on his character and the inner workings of organized crime. He said in an interview, "There's your idiots who hold up a place and get caught because they leave their wallet there, but there's mastermind criminals and they all come in different shapes and sizes and different levels of intellect. I think there are people with real talent and people who take it enormously seriously, and those are the kinds of people I talked to."
CJ Jones as Joe: Baby's foster father, who is deaf and a wheelchair user. Casting director Francine Maisler was tasked with hiring a suitable actor to play Joseph. Though Jones was significantly younger than the role called for, he was hired from a handful of prospective actors, most of whom were not deaf. Jones opted not to work with an on-set interpreter until later in production. He also helped Elgort hone his sign language (ASL) with an on-set tutor.
Other cast members include Flea as Eddie "No Nose", Lanny Joon as JD, Sky Ferreira as Baby's biological mother (an aspiring singer), R. Marcus Taylor as Armie, a crooked police officer, Lance Palmer as Baby's biological father (an abusive alcoholic), Big Boi and Killer Mike as restaurant patrons, Paul Williams as "The Butcher", Walter Hill as the voice of a courtroom ASL interpreter, and Jon Spencer as a prison guard. Noel Fielding and Nick Frost have cameos through archive footage on Baby's TV, appearing in the music video for Mint Royale's "Blue Song" (directed by Wright), in which Fielding played a prototypical version of Baby.
