Iconic movie roles originally offered to someone else

LeafOnTheWind

LeafOnTheWind

Well-Known Member
Messages
17,867
I got caught in a YouTube spree of movie roles that had originally been offered to someone else.

www.youtube.com

Iconic Roles That Were Meant For Someone Else

Can you ever imagine some of cinema’s most iconic characters being played by another actor? Can you imagine Indiana Jones being played by Tom Cruise or Jules...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

Stuart Townsend as Aragorn in Lord of the Rings | 0:23
Sean Connery as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings| 0:54
Will Smith as Django | 1:29
Robert Downey Jr. as Lt. Matthew Kowalski in Gravity | 1:58
Chris Farley as Shrek | 2:28
Meg Ryan, Diane Lane, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman | 2:57
Meryl Streep as Ellen Ripley in Alien | 3:32
O.J. Simpson as The Terminator | 4:02
Bill Murray as Batman | 4:38
Everyone in Ghostbusters | 5:13
Just about everyone as Sam Wheat in Ghost | 6:20

www.youtube.com

Top 10 Actors Who Missed Out on Roles Written for Them

Imagine if these films starred the people who the writers actually envisioned? For this list, we’ll be looking at specific roles in films which are confirmed...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

Some of these aren't quite as iconic but interesting anyway.


I can't imagine anyone else in the most of the roles in the first list. I am sure there are a ton of other iconic roles that were originally intended for someone else. List the ones you know. :)
 
mpal2 said:
I got caught in a YouTube spree of movie roles that had originally been offered to someone else.

www.youtube.com

Iconic Roles That Were Meant For Someone Else

Can you ever imagine some of cinema’s most iconic characters being played by another actor? Can you imagine Indiana Jones being played by Tom Cruise or Jules...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

Stuart Townsend as Aragorn in Lord of the Rings | 0:23
Sean Connery as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings| 0:54
Click to expand...
I can't either being as good as Viggo Morenson and Alan McLennan (sp?)
 
I believe Bruce Willis was way down on the list of actors considered for Die Hard. According to Wikipedia, they were contractually obligated to offer it to Frank Sinatra first :lol:

Keanu Reeves was not the first choice for either Speed or The Matrix. And I think Brad Pitt was the first choice to play Jason Bourne.
 
Michael Keaton was offered Groundhog Day but turned it down because he didn't understand the script when he read it. I could totally see Michael Keaton in that role in Groundhog Day though, even though Bill Murray kills it in that movie. I love Groundhog Day! Watch it every time I see its on. :rofl:

I've read articles like this before about stars who turned down roles and some of them were just .. no. Tom Hanks was offered The Shawshank Redemption ... nope, don't see it. John Travolta as Forrest Gump ... nope, don't see that either. There's some other crazy ones I can't remember but I just couldn't see those actors in those roles.
 
Last edited:
How much of this is influenced by the great performances from the actors that did get the roles? Or would the movies have not been such a big hit if they had hired someone else. Sometimes I can't tell what would have made the biggest difference.
 
Similarly, the finalists for Dirty Dancing were Jennifer Grey or Sarah Jessica Parker and Billy Zane or Patrick Swayze.

Jennifer Grey was the favorite but it was very close to being Billy Zane for the role of Johnny.
 
skategal said:
Similarly, the finalists for Dirty Dancing were Jennifer Grey or Sarah Jessica Parker and Billy Zane or Patrick Swayze.

Jennifer Grey was the favorite but it was very close to being Billy Zane for the role of Johnny.
Click to expand...
I heard the only reason Zane didn’t get it was because it turned out he seriously couldn’t dance.

I wonder if it’s worse to lose out on the role during an audition after being close, turning down a role that ended up being a huge success for another actor, or getting cast but being replaced after a director comes to the conclusion that you’re wrong for the part or another actor would be better.
 
VGThuy said:
I heard the only reason Zane didn’t get it was because it turned out he seriously couldn’t dance.

I wonder if it’s worse to lose out on the role during an audition after being close, turning down a role that ended up being a huge success for another actor, or getting cast but being replaced after a director comes to the conclusion that you’re wrong for the part or another actor would be better.
Click to expand...
Yes lack of dancing experience was the problem with Zane.

But he got so close he was screentested with both Jennifer Grey and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Plus Jennifer Grey was lobbying hard for him once she was cast because she had worked with Patrick Swayze before and they didn’t get along.

The lead writer/creator wanted Swayze from the start but he had put no dancing on his resume (because he had suffered a bad injury from dancing) even though he knew everything about dancing.

Someone else on staff told the director that Patrick could dance, had been in a ballet company, and that his mom was the best dancing instructor in Texas. :lol:

And then they all convinced Patrick to dance and convinced Jennifer to work with him again.
 
VGThuy said:
I wonder if it’s worse to lose out on the role during an audition after being close, turning down a role that ended up being a huge success for another actor, or getting cast but being replaced after a director comes to the conclusion that you’re wrong for the part or another actor would be better.
Click to expand...
IIRC the latter is what happened to Stuart Townsend in LOTR. Viggo Mortensen was a last-minute change.

A TV example is Riff Regan, who played Willow in the unaired Buffy pilot. It was definitely the right decision to recast the role.
 
Lisa Kudrow originally had the role of Roz on Fraser but got fired before the pilot aired.

Back to Micheal Keaton, he was supposed to play Jack on Lost but the character was supposed to die in the pilot. When they decided to keep the character, they had to find someone else.
 
Tom Cruise was offered the lead role in ‘The man from uncle‘ but he declined because he wanted to focus on MI. The plan was to give the role of Ilya to Henry Cavil (sp?). After Cruise declined, they gave Henry that role and signed Armie Hammer to play Ilya. I thought he was a much better fit to play the Russian than Cavil would have been.

I read that Emma Watson was offered the role of Mia in La La Land but she declined because she wanted to focus on one of the Fairy tale movies (I don’t remember which). So it went to the other Emma and she won the Oscar for it.

For the very first StarWars movie, I read that they had made two teams. One was the iconic trio that appeared. Carrie Fisher was the 19 year old daughter of Debbie... Harrison Ford was not yet famous ( this was before the first Indiana Jones movie). Mark Hamill was also unknown. I don’t remember the other trio, but I don’t believe they were offered the roles. If I still have George Lucas’s book, I will look it up.
 
Last edited:
I think there are roles that you cannot imagine anyone else than the actor who played them so some of these people who had an inside track to these parts are so surprising:

Christina Applegate as Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon cast)

Leonardo DiCaprio as Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch cast)

Emily Blunt as Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson cast)

Will Smith as Neo (Keanu Reeves cast)

Gwyneth Paltrow as Rose (Kate Winslet cast)

Al Pacino as Han Solo (Harrison Ford cast)
 
MsZem said:
IIRC the latter is what happened to Stuart Townsend in LOTR. Viggo Mortensen was a last-minute change.

A TV example is Riff Regan, who played Willow in the unaired Buffy pilot. It was definitely the right decision to recast the role.
Click to expand...
Another infamous example is Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly in Back to the Future.


And Bruce Banner/Hulk - from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo
 
I'm not sure if this is true, but I heard that the role of Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek TNG, was to go to Werner Klemperer. But......"Make it so" won out over "Ensign I want to talk to you! THIRTY DAYS IN THE COOLAA!". Again, I don't know if it's true.
 
I think just about anyone could have played the part of Rose in Titanic. It's not a challenging role. I wanted to slap her at least 10 times during that dreck of a movie. I like Kate Winslet but IMO she's about the worst choice they could have made opposite Leo DeCaprio. Or maybe Leo was the one who was miscast.
 
skategal said:
Similarly, the finalists for Dirty Dancing were Jennifer Grey or Sarah Jessica Parker and Billy Zane or Patrick Swayze.

Jennifer Grey was the favorite but it was very close to being Billy Zane for the role of Johnny.
Click to expand...
I think Sarah Jessica Parker would have nailed that role, and she would have been a real pro, ie, it would have been a good experience for Swayze, too.

A friend worked for Ensemble Studio Theatre in the early '80's when Sarah Jessica Parker, then in her early '20's, was rehearsing the workshopped version of "For Gillian on her 37th Birthday" and got me into rehearsals, and the calm and focused way she worked was truly impressive.
 
Here's one for you. Steven Spielberg originally wanted Harrison Ford for Indiana Jones, but George Lucas said no. They auditioned multiple actors for the role, including Tom Selleck, who was offered the part -- but had to back out at the last minute because his pilot for Magnum PI had just been picked up by CBS. Spielberg ended up offering the role to Ford after all. He joined the cast just six weeks before they were supposed to start shooting.

And another one: Pierce Brosnan was offered the role of James Bond in The Living Daylights, but when they learned of the casting, and all the publicity he received from it, NBC forced him to return and finish out the final year of his contract on Remington Steele. Timothy Dalton was ultimately cast as Bond. NBC really did him dirty -- but Brosnan finally got the part anyway, eight years later.
 
Last edited:
Marilyn Monroe and then Shirley MacLaine wrere offered the role of Holly Golightly before it went to Audrey Hepburn.
 
Cachoo said:
I think there are roles that you cannot imagine anyone else than the actor who played them so some of these people who had an inside track to these parts are so surprising:

Will Smith as Neo (Keanu Reeves cast)
Click to expand...

While Keanu Reeves is great as Neo, I actually could see Will Smith in that role. He isn't a complete lightweight in roles that call for more drama and pathos, and I think he could have handled the physicality of the role of Neo too.
 
Shirley Temple was offered the role of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Shirley was under contract with 20th century Fox. When MGM could not strike a deal with Fox, they decided to use one of their own contract players Judy Garland and weren't we the lucky ones!
I don't think Temple could have pulled off the vulnerability that Garland did. It would have been a great movie but not a legendary one.
Don't get me wrong. Shirley was a family story. My mom got to play with her and my Unlce directed many of her movies.
BTW if you haven't watched Kennedy Center Honors...(YouTube) the show honoring her is worth watching.
 
Karen-W said:
While Keanu Reeves is great as Neo, I actually could see Will Smith in that role. He isn't a complete lightweight in roles that call for more drama and pathos, and I think he could have handled the physicality of the role of Neo too.
Click to expand...
The problem I have with Will Smith is that he usually has so much charisma even in his serious films that all of his movies end up as Will Smith movies and he takes over the material. I think Keanu is more of a blank canvass to allow the movie and material to shine without distracting people that it’s Will Smith in the role.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back
Top
Do Not Sell My Personal Information