32 actors who turned down iconic roles
Oct. 16, 2023Will Smith as Neo? Leonardo DiCaprio as Spider-Man? Such casting possibilities almost happened once upon a time
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So much can change with a simple yes or no. The most famous actors in Hollywood have enjoyed long careers simply because they played the right part at the right time. But just as often, actors have turned down huge roles that went on to be iconic – because they are played by somebody else entirely.
The reasons why actors turn down life-changing gigs vary. Sometimes it’s just a matter of scheduling. Other times the reasons are more personal. Maybe the material doesn’t excite them, maybe they don’t think they’re the right fit, or maybe there’s just that inner voice telling something better is around the corner. Whatever the case, Hollywood is an industry full of what-ifs and what-could-have-been. With that in mind, here are 32 actors who turned down iconic movie roles.
32. Sean Connery did, in fact, pass Gandalf in Lord of the Rings
Sir Ian McKellen cemented movie immortality in his role as Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. But in a 20th anniversary oral history feature forThe Independent, New Line Cinema producer Mark Ordesky says other actors were offered the part, including Sean Connery and Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis. Both said no. Speaking on the reason Connery declined, Ordesky simply said, “he read the material and just didn’t get it.”
Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls starred Elizabeth Berkley, who was eager to break from her squeaky-clean sitcom image. But before Berkley was cast, Showgirls had other leads in mind, including none other than Madonna.
As detailed in a retrospective piece forThe Hollywood Reporter, Madonna had just starred in Body of Evidence and was interested in the job. But her insistence on major revisions didn’t vibe with the filmmakers, so the team moved on before eventually hiring Berkley.
John Travolta enjoyed career highs throughout the 1970s with hits like Grease and Saturday Night Fever. By the early 1990s, Travolta’s star power had arguably waned when filmmaker Robert Zemeckis began putting together what would become Forrest Gump.
Before Tom Hanks was cast, Zemeckis reached out to Travolta to star. But Travolta opted to try something more bold than Zemeckis’ wholesome film about a naïve but kind man stumbling through history. Instead of Forrest Gump, Travolta chose to star in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction as hit man Vincent Vega. Needless to say, Travolta had his box of chocolates. Who knew what he was going to get?
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The 1993 rom-com Sleepless in Seattle was just one of several A-plus collaborations between Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, and the late Nora Ephron. But before Meg Ryan played the role of lovestruck Annie Reed, it was offered to Julia Roberts.
While it’s more fitting that the actor playing the galactic father of Chris Pratt’s ‘80s-obsessed space outlaw Star-Lord is ‘80s icon Kurt Russell, the part of Ego the Living Planet almost went to Matthew McConaughey. In an interview with Playboy (viaDigital Spy), McConaughey said he was balancing between Marvel and The Dark Tower, and opted for The Dark Tower instead. We’d say “Oops!” but McConaughey is honestly the best thing in The Dark Tower.
Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine for so long, his character has literally died and resurrected (just like the comics). But before the Australian actor clawed his way to fame, the part of Wolverine was almost fleshed out by Viggo Mortensen. Amusingly, Mortensen turned it down on the advice of his son.
Oops, All Heathers! Heather Graham, known for movies like Boogie Nights, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, and The Hangover, almost played one of the Heathers, Heather Chandler (which went to Kim Walker, whose name isn’t Heather).
Before Alec Guinness donned the robes of Obi-Wan, George Lucas first approached Japanese movie star Toshiro Mifune.
Mika Mifune elaborated that sci-fi movies did not look as polished nor was it a respected genre. She added that her father, who starred in pictures like Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and The Hidden Fortress (which inspired Lucas' vision for Star Wars) also turned down an arguably even more iconic part: Darth Vader.
“At the time, sci-fi movies still looked quite cheap as the effects were not advanced and he had a lot of samurai pride," Mika Mifune said, “So then, there was talk about him taking the Darth Vader role as his face would be covered, but in the end he turned that down too.”
She elaborated that the part of bookish beauty Belle required its own arduous prep that would have left her no time for La La Land simultaneously. “I knew I had horse training, I knew I had dancing, I knew I had three months of singing ahead of me and I knew I had to be in London to really do that,” she said. “This wasn’t a movie I could just kind of parachute into. I knew I had to do the work, and I had to be where I had to be. So, you know, scheduling conflict-wise, it didn’t work out.”
Ghostbusters went through countless iterations before cameras started rolling in 1983. Not only was it originally a high-concept sci-fi, but movie star Eddie Murphy was meant to have a meaty part alongside John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. (The movie was basically meant for SNL guys to have some laughs catching ghosts.)
In 1996, Drew Barrymore was a former child actress maturing into a real movie star when she appeared in Wes Craven’s inventive teen slasher Scream. On the 25th anniversary of its release, Barrymore said onher daytime talk showthat she was an uncredited producer on the project and was going to star as lead protagonist Sidney (ultimately played by Neve Campbell). But Barrymore said she wanted to surprise audiences and allow herself to be the movie’s first victim.
Recalled Barrymore: “You kind of always have this tension, but you kind of know that your hero is going to make it. And I thought ‘What if I die?’, and then it’ll be like all bets are off, anybody could get killed in this movie and would take away that cliché safety net of ‘the girl always gets away’."
Before he won an Oscar for playing Batman’s most famous villain, Joaquin Phoenix almost played Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme.
Brian Cox has been an accomplished actor since even before he made the F-word a signature catchphrase on HBO’s Succession. But in his memoir Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, Cox humorously notes that he was offered the role of Robert Baratheon on another HBO epic about dynasties, Game of Thrones.
Wrote Cox: “I’m often asked if I was offered a role in Game of Thrones — reason being that every other bugger was — and the answer is, yes, I was supposed to be a king called Robert Baratheon, who apparently died when he was gored by a boar in the first season," Cox wrote. “I know very little about Game of Thrones, so I can’t tell you whether or not he was an important character, and I’m not going togoogleit just in case he was, because I turned it down.”
While Cox didn’t want to be gored by a boar, he has no problem making others theboar on his floor.
Rachel McAdams almost wore red on Wednesdays.
After her breakthrough success in movies like Mean Girls and The Notebook, McAdams had offers come in for major projects, ranging from the James Bond reboot Casino Royale to the picture that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man. Instead, McAdams took a brief hiatus and moved back to her birth country of Canada for her mental health.
Thinking back on it in an appearance onThe View, Golding said: “It’s for someone else who is going to bring the A-game, who is a legitimate actor.” It was only after insistence by Chu that Golding decided to partake in the studio’s gamble on an unknown like him. In the end, casting Golding was like winning the lottery.
Throughout his prolific career, Liam Neeson’s roles include mentors to Jedi Knights and angry fathers who sound terrifying on the phone. But one role that eluded Liam Neeson was James Bond. The Irish actor passed on starring in GoldenEye not because it disinterested him, but because his would-be wife, the late Natasha Richardson, would refuse to marry him.
Neeson joked with O’Brien by playing out a theoretical scenario that underscores Richardson’s problem with the job: Her husband coming home after closely working with beautiful co-stars all day. “These boring, horribly beautiful women! I can’t take it anymore!”
Even without Star Wars and Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford is a respected institution in Hollywood through movies like The Fugitive and Air Force One. But one mega-blockbuster Ford declined to dig into was Steven Spielberg’s revolutionary Jurassic Park.
With both Spielberg and Ford in attendance for a Q&A, Ford jokingly complained that Spielberg only hires him to play Indiana Jones. Spielberg fired back, saying: “Do you know who I offered Jurassic Park to? This guy. Alan Grant, I first offered to this guy.”
Speed kept Keanu Reeves’ box office hot streak going and made Sandra Bullock a movie star. But the movie’s leading female role of Annie Porter, who finds herself helping Reeves’ character drive a rigged-to-explode Los Angeles bus, was first offered to Halle Berry.
In a 1995 edition of Movieline (viaFar Out), Berry revealed she wasn’t interested in the part because it wasn’t dialogue-heavy. “I turned down Speed because I thought, ‘I don’t want to drive that bus.’”
Berry said she appreciated the movie’s color-blind casting, a rarity at the time. But she also acknowledged that being a Black woman might not have netted her the same success Speed did for Bullock.
“Had it been me driving that bus, that wouldn’t be my reality, and that’s a fact,” she said. “It’s not my reality after being in The Flintstones, one of the biggest movies of the year, so why would I think it should be my reality after Speed? As a Black woman, I know better. My reality is very different. My struggle is very different.”
Titanic was unsinkable when it opened in 1997, its all-time tragic love story forever imprinting Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as the perfect onscreen pair for a generation. But the role of high-society gal Rose was almost played by Claire Danes.
In hindsight, Danes expressed no regrets. “I was feeling eager to have different creative experiences and that felt like a repeat and it was going to propel me towards something that I knew I didn’t have the resources to cope with.”
Will Hunter almost hunted on Pandora.
“I’ve probably done, like, 50 movies. I’ve never been in a movie that made one billion.”
His reason was simply, “Italians should play Italians.” Turns out, there are offers you can refuse.
Superman’s might over popular culture means that any time a new movie version of the comic book icon enters development, the biggest names in Hollywood are always considered for the Man of Steel.
Richard Donner’s 1978 film took a chance on an unknown Christopher Reeve, whose acclaimed performance is now synonymous with the character. But other actors said to have been approached include the biggest names of the ‘70s, including Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, and Paul Newman (who, let’s be real, exudes more Lex Luthor energy).
While their reasons for passing on the cape of Superman aren’t known, it’s just too much fun to imagine an alternate universe where the leader of the Justice League had a different face.
But you know who else was almost Neo? You would never guess…
While Keanu Reeves sat on the offer to star in The Matrix, other actors were courted in case Reeves backed out. One actor happens to be close friend and Speed co-star Sandra Bullock.
In an interview a decade earlier on NBC’s Today, Bullock also confirmed she was approached for the role of Trinity, which went to Carrie-Ann Moss.
It’s impossible to imagine anyone but Samuel L. Jackson as Bible-quoting mob hit man Jules Vincent in Pulp Fiction. But Quentin Tarantino actually had Laurence Fishburne in mind, and in fact wrote the character around his voice. But Fishburne chose not to wear the suit of Jules.
Reese Witherspoon never shined brighter than as sorority girl turned Harvard law student Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. But before Witherspoon was approached, sitcom queen Christina Applegate was considered first.
Humbly, she acknowledged Witherspoon’s dominance in the role, and believed she would have “completely screwed it up.”
When the role of James Bond was changing hands between Sean Connery, who had grown tired of the character, and Australian model George Lazenby (who played the role just once, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), actor Clint Eastwood was invited to accept the 007 title. His first movie would have been Live and Let Die in 1973.
Some 50 years later, Eastwood reflected on the opportunity, and believed he wasn’t a good fit and turned down “pretty good money.”
Said Eastwood in a 2009 interview with Indie London (viaThe Clint Eastwood Archive): “I thought James Bond should be British. I am of British, but by that same token, I thought that it should be more of the culture there, and also, it was not my thing.”
Alongside Marlon Brando and James Dean, Montgomery Clift was among the biggest movie stars of the 1950s to practice method acting (though Clift himself was not big on the term). Throughout his relatively short career, he memorably starred in pictures like The Search, A Place in the Sun, and From Here to Eternity. But Clift is almost more famous for the movies he turned down, which include seismic films like Rope, Sunset Boulevard, High Noon, and War and Peace.
Arguably the biggest movie Clift skipped on? On the Waterfront. Clift was at one point offered the role of longshoreman Terry Malloy. For unknown reasons, Clift passed, which gave Marlon Brando to forever imprint on audiences the tragedy of being dealt losing cards in life.
It’s hard to imagine Al Pacino in a family franchise like Star Wars. But after turning heads in The Godfather, Pacino was offered literally everything in Hollywood. This included the part of Han Solo in 1977’s Star Wars.
Leonardo DiCaprio has been Hollywood’s golden child for as long as he’s been in Hollywood. While he is no stranger to blockbuster productions, he’s famously choosy about roles and isn’t up to doing just anything. Which is why DiCaprio’s list of parts he’s passed on looks like a parade of Comic-Con cosplayers.
DiCaprio hasn’t just passed on playing Spider-Man (for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man) and Batman’s sidekick Robin (for Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever), he also didn’t sign on to play Anakin Skywalker in George Lucas’ prequel trilogy. Nor did he sign on for American Psycho, a part that is too juicy not to consider the what-if possibilities.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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