From Steve Martin as Indiana Jones to De Niro as Jack Sparrow. A guide to Hollywood’s strangest casting near-misses

From Steve Martin as Indiana Jones to De Niro as Jack Sparrow. A guide to Hollywood’s strangest casting near-misses

SaveComment speech bubble iconShare icon De Niro was offered the part of the roguish pirate later immortalised by Johnny Depp. But he was convinced the film would be a flop – not an unreasonable view given the disastrous performance of another pirate movie, Cutthroat Island, in 1995. With executives weighing the benefits of sending the project straight to video, he worried his reputation might be harmed.

However, when Pirates became a smash and revived Depp’s then-ailing career, De Niro was said to have regretted his decision – which is why he signed up as swashbuckling Captain Shakespeare in Matthew Vaughan’s fairytale flop Stardust.

Arnold Schwarzenegger claims Naked Gun star and (subsequent) murder suspect Simpson was the studio’s first pick for the part of a time-travelling robot assassin. “It was actually OJ Simpson that was the first-cast Terminator,” he said.“Somehow Terminator director James Cameron felt that he was not as believable for a killing machine. So then they hired me. That’s really what happened.”

The mid-nineties John Travolta-naissance was sealed by his turn as a groovy hit-man in Tarantino’s 1995 classic. But Tarantino had to fight to cast the Saturday Night Fever star, then regarded as washed-up and a box office liability.

Before asking sometime carpenter Harrison Ford if he fancied going to a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars director George Lucas seemingly offered the part of Han Solo to half the actors in Hollywood—as well as non-actors Gene Simmons of Kiss and Roger Daltrey of The Who.

He finally set his sights on Al Pacino, who was super hot coming off The Godfather Parts One and Two. Alas, Pacino couldn’t get his head around the story and passed.

Hopkins won an Oscar for freaking out Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. But could he have faced down the evil Balrog as Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings? As the part went to Ian McKellen, we’ll obviously never know – though with AI, you can never rule anything out. But Jackson had certainly been keen on Hopkins after his original pick as Gandalf, Sean Connery, passed (he found the story incomprehensible).

“I don’t think you’re ever the first choice,” McKellen remembered. “I certainly wasn’t the first choice for Gandalf. Tony Hopkins turned it down.”

Much like his friend George Lucas on his quest for the perfect Han Solo, Steven Spielberg looked high and low when casting whip-cracking pulp hero Indiana Jones. Saturday Night Live comics Steve Martin, Bill Murray and Chevvy Chase all read for the role - which was finally offered to Tom Selleck. But he had to withdraw due to his commitment to Magnum PI, clearing the way for Harrison Ford to portray another iconic character.

4. Liam Neeson as James Bond

Before finally casting Pierce Brosnan as the new 007 in 1995’s GoldenEye, Bond producer Barbara Broccoli sized up another raffish Irishman – Schindler’s List star Liam Neeson.

“Barbara Broccoli had called me a couple of times to ask if I was interested, and I said, ‘Yes, I would be interested”,” Neeson reminisced. “And then my lovely wife Natasha Richardson, God rest her soul, said to me while we were shooting Nell down in the Carolinas, “Liam, I want to tell you something: If you play James Bond, we’re not getting married.”

With Pulp Fiction, Daniel Day-Lewis was keen to elbow Travolta aside for the part of Vincent Vega. Several years previously, Travolta was everyone’s first choice as the lead in Robert Zemeckis’s Forrest Gump. But he felt he didn’t have the qualities needed to bring the charmingly naive character alive on screen.

“If I didn’t do something Tom Hanks did, then I did something else that was equally interesting or fun,” he said. “But I feel good about some I gave up because other careers were created.”

2. Michelle Pfeiffer as Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs

Jodie Foster won an Oscar playing a rookie FBI agent with a traumatic past in Jonathan Demme’s creepy blockbuster. But she wouldn’t have bagged the part had Demme’s original choice not turned him down.

“With Silence of the Lambs, I was trepidatious,” said Michelle Pfeiffer. “There was such evil in that film. The thing I most regret is missing the opportunity to do another film with Jonathan Demme. It was that evil won in the end, that at the end of that film evil ruled out. I was uncomfortable with that ending. I didn’t want to put that out into the world.”

1. Meryl Streep as Ellen Ripley in Alien

In space, no one can hear you receive your P45. In the summer of 1978, with cameras set to roll on Ridley Scott’s unsettling space caper Alien, casting director Mary Goldberg presented the director with two potential choices as resourceful heroine, Ellen Ripley.

Show comments The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our commenting policy. - X Icon

• Facebook Icon
• WhatsApp Icon

3/5

3/5

Play Casino online with over 500 games including slots, table game, poker, blackjack and more, Join CaptainJackCasino and get $11,000 free Welcome bonus

This site only collects related articles. Viewing the original, please copy and open the following link:Leonardo DiCaprio in Baywatch? Actings 10 greatest what ifs