Crown, a billionaire and Catherine's lover. Rene Russo as Catherine Banning, an insurance investigator and Thomas' lover. Denis Leary as Detective Michael McCann, a police detective. Fritz Weaver as John Reynolds Frankie Faison as Detective Paretti, a police detective. Ben Gazzara as Andrew Wallace Mark Margolis as Heinrich Knutzhorn Esther Cañadas as Anna Tyrol Knutzhorn James Saito as Paul Cheng Faye Dunaway as Psychiatrist Michael Lombard as Bobby McKinley Simon Jones as Accountant on phone (uncredited) Cynthia Darlow as Daria Dunaway played the Catherine Banning role in the 1968 original. However, the character's name was Vicki Anderson. Production At first, director John McTiernan was unavailable for the project. Pierce Brosnan and his fellow producers considered several directors (including Mike Newell, Andrew Davis, Roger Donaldson) before returning to their original choice. McTiernan then received the script and added his own ideas to the production. Script amendments After McTiernan signed on to the project, he changed the theme of the central heist and a number of key scenes. McTiernan felt that contemporary audiences would be less forgiving of Thomas Crown if he staged two armed bank robberies for fun as McQueen did in the original, rather than if he staged an unarmed art heist. He wrote the heist based on the Trojan horse theme and on a technical failure of thermal cameras. McTiernan also deemed a polo match that was used in the original and had been rewritten into the new script to be clichéd, and he wanted a scene that conveyed more action and excitement, not just wealth. He substituted a catamaran race, in which Brosnan performed his own stunts. References to 1968 film There are a number of echo references to the original 1968 version of the film. The most obvious is the casting of Faye Dunaway as Crown's psychiatrist; Dunaway portrayed insurance investigator Vicki Anderson in the original. In the remake, "The Windmills of Your Mind" plays during the ballroom scene, as background music in a couple of other scenes, and during the credits at the end; the song earned an Oscar for the original film. Both films share a nearly identical scene with Crown playing high-stakes golf, and in both films Crown pilots a glider for recreation. Filming Filming took place in several parts of New York City, including Central Park. The corporate headquarters of Lucent Technologies stood in for Crown's suite of offices. Due to the impossibility