While our culture deifies pop culture icons such as A-list actors, they are all too human, and make mistakes both large and small. If you have a prominent career in Hollywood, it’s inevitable that you will lose out on a great part. For film fans, this creates a gallery of “what ifs,” some tantalizing, such as the thought of John Lithgow as the Joker, some merely interesting, such as Lindsay Lohan playing Regina George, and others thankfully unrealized, such as Nicolas Cage in the role of Superman.
What makes these missed opportunities even more fascinating is the stories behind them. Some stars missed out on major roles because of circumstances beyond their control, others passed on great parts for reasons that are absolutely ridiculous, like thinking that Italian film makers couldn’t make a Western, failing to understand a book beloved by millions of middle-schoolers, or convincing a director that you’re a bad choice for a part that has been earmarked for you.
It’s amazing to think that numerous movies could have been saved - or ruined - if only an actor or actress had the good sense to understand how wonderful a certain role was. It’s enough to make us hope that the multiverse theory is true, so we could peek into another universe and see how drastically altered film history would be if only a few casting processes had gone a little bit differently.
With that in mind, here is our list of 20 Iconic Movie Roles Almost Played By A-Listers.
11. Will Smith As Neo (The Matrix)
In the 1990s, Will Smith was on his way to becoming the king of Hollywood science fiction, thanks to his roles in the blockbusters Independence Day and Men in Black. Following those hits, he had a choice: he could star in The Matrix, a film by a pair of acclaimed independent directors, or Wild Wild West, a film based on a nearly forgotten 60s TV show. He chose the latter; a film so bad he later apologized for making it.
Smith said that he turned The Matrix down because it sounded unappealing when it was pitched to him. How could someone not love a film about people being put in goo-filled pods to be used as batteries? At least he didn’t have to star in The Matrix Revolutions.
10. Sean Connery As Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings)
When casting the iconic character of Gandalf, Peter Jackson needed a British actor of a certain age with a strong screen presence. Sean Connery was an excellent choice. To see if he wanted to commit to the part, Connery dutifully read Jackson’s script, as well as the classic J. R. R. Tolkien novel it was adapted from. While The Fellowship of the Ring is beloved by readers the world over, Connery simply couldn’t understand its plot, so he passed on the project.
When the film was completed, Jackson kindly invited Connery to its premiere and after watching it, he still couldn’t understand it. As talented as Connery is, Sir Ian McKellen was the better choice, just for understanding the movie.
18. Emily Blunt as Black Widow
When Emily Blunt was supposedly cast as Captain Marvel, she refuted the rumor, saying it was just an example of fan casting. Blunt said she was offered the role of Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but had to pass on it due to scheduling conflicts. She may have lost the opportunity to play a comic book icon but she also missed out on having to deal with the prominent Internet backlash against the portrayal of Black Widow in Age of Ultron.
Blunt can take comfort in the fact that the MCU will likely continue to break box office records for the next several decades, so the folks over at Marvel will probably have a role for her at some point.
12. Lindsay Lohan As Regina George
For most Mean Girls fans, the film’s villainess Regina George was a much more memorable character than the its protagonist, Cady Heron. Lindsay Lohan felt the same way, and wanted to play the queen bee herself. The heads of Paramount Pictures were not too happy with the idea; they felt that if Lohan was the lead character in her biggest hit, Freaky Friday, she should be the lead in Mean Girls to replicate the earlier film’s success.
Playing Regina George would have given Lohan a chance to display her range as an actress, but it wasn’t meant to be. Besides, could anyone exude confidence, flawless charm, and evil as well as Rachel McAdams? Maybe Beyoncé, if she was in a bad mood.
16. John Lithgow As The Joker
John Lithgow turned down the chance to play the Joker, not once but twice. First, he turned down the part in a Joe Dante-helmed Batman film that was never made, simply because he was tired after his role in a production of M. Butterfly. Then, when Tim Burton was ready to make his version of the film, the part was Lithgow’s until he told Burton that he didn’t think he was the right guy for the job.
Most actors couldn’t fail an audition that hard if they tried. Somehow, Lithgow was not aware of how iconic the character was at the time, and regretted his decision later.
5. Michael Jackson As Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars
One of the most acclaimed pop singers in history almost played one of the most hated film characters in history. When George Lucas was looking for an actor to play the giant duck-lizard that spawned a million Internet complaints, the King of Pop was in the running for the part, having already played a similar family-friendly role in the fantasy cult-classic, The Wiz.
What broke the deal with Lucas was that Jackson wanted to play Jar Jar in makeup and prosthetics, while Lucas wanted to use state of the art CGI to bring the character to life. A young dancer named Ahmed Best was cast as Jar Jar instead, and Jackson managed to avoid another late-career embarrassment.
4. John Travolta As Forrest Gump
1994 saw one of the tightest Oscar races in history, with both the beloved and ground-breaking Pulp Fiction and the beloved but conventional Forrest Gump going for the gold. In the end, Gump won, but Pulp Fiction is far more likely to be taught in film history classes. The race between the films would have had a completely different dynamic if Forrest Gump was played by director Robert Zemeckis’ original choice for the part: John Travolta.
It also would likely have increased Travolta’s chances of winning an Academy Award. Though he was nominated for the Best Actor Award for playing the lead in Pulp Fiction, he lost the award to Tom Hanks for playing Forrest Gump.
6. Burt Reynolds As Han Solo
When Burt Reynolds passed away earlier this year, he left behind a legacy of popular films including Deliverance, Smokey and the Bandit, and Boogie Nights. That said, he did not always make the best decisions, and he turned down more iconic films than he accepted. He declined to play Han Solo, as he “didn’t want to play that kind of role at the time.” He came to regret that decision, and as great as Harrison Ford was in the role, Reynolds certainly had the charisma and talent to pull it off.
Reynolds also passed on the chance to play James Bond, as he felt that the public would never accept someone who wasn’t from the UK as 007. He passed on the male lead in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Terms of Endearment as well. Maybe Reynolds was just really charitable to other actors!
17. Tom Cruise as Iron Man
Tom Cruise has confirmed longstanding rumors that he was in the running for the role of Iron Man, though he stresses that he wasn’t a lock for the part. Cruise doesn’t hold any grudges. He thinks that Robert Downey Jr. was perfect as Tony Stark, though he would be willing to dawn the iron suit if he were given a good script for an Iron Man project.
We can only speculate why Cruise didn’t get the part, but Downey was clearly the perfect choice as he helped launched the highest-grossing film franchise of all time.
7. Gary Oldman As Edward Scissorhands
Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands remains one of the most unique major studio films of the 1990s. As wonderful as the film is, the story of an artificial man who has scissors for hands and falls in love with a teenager does sound a bit odd; off-putting, even. When Gary Oldman was given the film’s script, he couldn’t parse out what on earth the film was trying to accomplish and passed on playing the title role. Out of curiosity, he saw the finished product in theaters, and he watched five minutes of the film before realizing that he passed on a brilliant part.
Oldman would go on to work with Edward Scissorhands star Winona Ryder in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
13. Nicolas Cage As Superman
The Man of Steel was supposed to be played by Nicolas Cage in Tim Burton’s Superman Lives, one of the most famous movies never made. The very idea of this film has fascinated comic book and movie fans for the past twenty years, even inspiring The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?, a critically-acclaimed Kickstarter documentary.
On the surface, this canceled project seems like it could have reached Batman & Robin or Battlefield Earth levels of legendary awfulness, especially considering that Cage has become a bit of a meme in the years since that hilarious remake of The Wicker Man. However, some of the people who worked on the canceled film felt that Cage brought nuance and vulnerability to the role during his screen tests.
20. Meryl Streep As Evita
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita was a Broadway smash. A film adaption was an obvious move, but took a ridiculously long time to come to fruition. Of all the aborted versions of the film, the one which was the closest to being made was an adaption starring Meryl Streep in the title role. Streep took singing lessons to prepare for the part and got the studio to agree to a large fee for her casting when she suddenly telegrammed the film’s producers that she was leaving the project due to unspecified “personal reasons.” The New York Times speculated that she was simply no longer interested in the role and asked for a large sum of money in the hope that no one could meet it. Eventually, runner-up Madonna got the part, and the rest is (mediocre) history.
19. Robert Redford As Rocky Balboa
When Sylvester Stallone started out in the film industry, he was a struggling screenwriter who needed a hit under his belt. He wrote Rocky, a boxing movie throwback to the kind, gentle dramas of Frank Capra. Big studios were interested but they wanted the film to have a big budget and to star someone who had carried blockbusters before, like Robert Redford, James Caan, or Ryan O’Neal.
Stallone hated the idea that the film would be successful without him in the lead, so he accepted a small sum for his screenplay and a less than modest budget for the film so that he could play Rocky. The risk paid off and he entertained action fans for years to come.
15. Warren Beatty As Bill In Kill Bill
Warren Beatty combines Old Hollywood charm with a New Hollywood sensibility, making him perfect for Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino even wrote the part of Bill in Kill Bill for Beatty, initially conceiving the character as a cross between James Bond and a Bond villain. However, Beatty knew that the Kill Bill films would be shot in China, and he didn’t want to be away from his children for very long. He even charitably recommended David Carradine for the role.
Beatty as Bill would have been great, or at the very least, interesting. However, he’s already been in his share of good movies. It was nice to see a talented B-movie actor like Carradine shine
14. Madonna As Ginger In Casino
The Material Girl herself was one of Martin Scorsese’s original choices to play Ginger in his crime epic Casino, but she lost the part. Madonna hasn’t always made the best film choices, but she was a good fit for Scorsese; both explore themes of religion and guilt in their work. The role went to another actress– Sharon Stone, who had risen to prominence thanks to her Golden Globe-nominate role in Basic Instinct.
Stone went on to receive a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for her performance in in Casino, while Madonna missed out on the Oscar nom for Evita.
9. Bela Lugosi As Frankenstein’s Monster
Hot off the success of the controversial Dracula, Universal Studios sought to turn another literary classic into a horror block-buster - Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Initially, they went for an obvious casting choice: Bela Lugosi. If he could carry a horror film once, why not twice? Lugosi, however, refused to play the monster, feeling that a role with so little dialogue would be degrading. Thanks to him, Universal created something more frightening than any vampire - a rival. Boris Karloff became the monster and the world’s biggest horror star; his career as a bankable actor outlasted Lugosi’s by decades. Taking a part where most of your lines are grunts isn’t degrading. Being second banana to a guy who got famous by grunting is degrading.
8. Christopher Lee As Dr. Sam Loomis
When director John Carpenter was casting Halloween, he wanted the film to have a horror pedigree. He cast Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of screen queen Janet Leigh, in the lead, and then asked Christopher Lee to play Dr. Sam Loomis. Lee had played Count Dracula in ten films, in addition to a myriad of other horror parts, and would have brought the role the elegance it needed.
Lee turned Carpenter down, a baffling move given that he starred in numerous films with far worse scripts. The role went to Donald Pleasance, who worked on the Halloween franchise for the next two decades. Carpenter was vindicated years later, when Lee told him that declining to appear in Halloween was the worst mistake of his career.
3. Sylvester Stallone In Beverly Hills Cop
When Sylvester Stallone was considered for the part of Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop, he rewrote the role to better suit him. Such a move certainly made sense; Stallone had previously written the scripts for his hits Rocky and First Blood, garnering an Academy Award nomination for the former. However, Stallone took the unexpected route of rewriting Beverly Hills Cop to be a humorless action film. The film’s producers were not impressed with his vision for the project, and felt that it completely missed the point of the original script, which was a fish out of water comedy.
Eddie Murphy won the role and the film was shot as a comedy using its original script, and the film became one of the most acclaimed Hollywood comedies of the 1980s.
2. Antonio Banderas As The Phantom Of The Opera
After his stand-out performance in Evita, Antonio Banderas seemed like an obvious choice to play the brooding titular character in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s The Phantom of the Opera. According to Banderas, “nothing ever came” of the talks he had about director Joel Schumacher’s project. Banderas went on to get a Tony nomination for his leading role in the musical Nine on Broadway.
For the curious, videos of him singing the musical’s title song can be found on YouTube, and he sounds much better than Gerard Butler, who got the part despite having no professional singing experience.
1. Emma Watson As Mia In La La Land
Of the three leads from the Harry Potter films, Emma Watson has had the most successful career, thanks to her appearances in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Noah, and Beauty and the Beast. She’s also made international headlines for being an outspoken women’s rights advocate. That doesn’t mean that she hasn’t made mistakes.
While she was offered the opportunity to play the lead in La La Land, she chose instead to play Belle in the Beauty and the Beast remake, missing out on the Best Actress Oscar that went to Emma Stone. While Beauty and the Beast was a huge box office success, Watson may wish that she had that little gold statue herself.
What alternative casting choices would you have preferred? Let us know in the comments!
