Movie Roles That Stars Turned Down

In tonight's episode, the part of Frank Costanza will be played by John Randolph.

 

Zemeckis wanted Fox for the part all along, but he was committed to Family Ties and they initially wouldn't work around the movie's shooting schedule because Meredith Baxter Birney was pregnant at the time. Once Eric Stoltz got canned from the movie, they basically went to Gary David Goldberg and begged to be allowed to cast Fox. Fox was basically working 20-hour days, plus weekends, for the entire movie shoot.

 

I have heard that Sean Connery turned down roles in The Matrix and LOTR (that one was offered to him multiple times) because he didn't understand the stories. When he saw how well they did, he jumped at League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, even though he didn't understand it. And that ended up being the last movie he made before retiring.

 

Adam Sandler and Leonardo DiCaprio were Quentin Tarantino's first choices to play The Bear Jew and Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds.

Rip Torn was cast in Easy Rider until he got into a fist fight with Dennis Hopper before shooting started, Jack Nicholson took his place.

Anthony Michael Hall was Kubrick's first choice to play Joker in Full Metal Jacket.

 

Denis Leary was up for the Wahlberg role in The Departed, he had to turn it down, I believe, because of shooting skeds with Rescue Me.

 

Eli Roth is perfect as the Bear Jew, but I'd imagine Sandler could have been pretty damn good, too. Once Sandler realized his cronies couldn't be Basterds, he probably just moved right on to Grown Ups (which I saw today and it was terrible, though I expected as much going in).

It would be awesome to see Sandler in a role again where he doesn't play himself, which seems to be the only thing he does nowadays.

 

Sandler was originally attached to Collateral in the role that Jaime Foxx wound up playing.

Ed Norton and Colin Farrell were both offered the role that Tom Cruise played.

 

There are some actors that just scream second choice (they couldn't get Tom Cruise/DeCaprio/Hanks/Denzel). Mark Wahlberg might be the king, but I'll throw in Jason Patric, Jeff Daniels, Luke Wilson, Laurence Fishburne, Ed Burns, Samuel L. Jackson, Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Clive Owen, Jake Gyllenhall....
Nothing wrong with them as actors, but I doubt a lot of producers go into meetings seeking a green light tossing those names on the table. Heck, Dustin Hoffman has still gets hand me downs and he's done okay.

 

Rock Hudson? Were they insane?

 

In an alternate reality on fringe, they had a scene where the watchers were leaving back to the future and it starred eric stoltz.
i thought it was a joke but on a nerd/fringe thread here, someone posted that it was real and he had been originally cast as marty mcfly.
pretty cool.

 

Yeah, nowadays it's tough to imagine anybody but Peck in that role, but I'm especially not seeing Hudson. They said on one of the classic movie channels that Hudson was the biggest box office draw at the time, but still.

 

We used to have a game in the newsroom called poor man or "hey we can't get that guy, but this guy is nearly as good and cheap, ie Kurt Russell was the poor man's Harrison Ford, Uriah Heep was the poor man's Deep Purple, etc.

Who would Walberg be the poor man for?