. Those early and ultimately aborted casting decisions just don’t tend to get talked about.
Sometimes, though, actors are very open about the high-profile parts they turned down, and the pangs of regret left behind once those films are actually made.
’s Elle Woods. Shudder. Here are 13 actors who turned their nose up at iconic movies, only to feel very silly about it later on.
Denzel Washington in
Se7en
“was the best material I had read in a long time … I was nervous about a first-time director, and I was wrong”. George Clooney ended up playing the role instead.
.
.
Leonardo DiCaprio in
Boogie Nights
.
, I wouldn’t be able to do the types of movies or have the career I have now, for sure. But it would have been interesting to see if I had gone the other way.”
Madonna in
The Matrix
,” she told Jimmy Fallon during a TV appearance in 2021. “Can you believe that? I wanna kill myself. That’s, like, one of the best movies ever made. A teeny-tiny part of me regrets just that one moment in my life.”
? No.”
Brad Pitt in
The Matrix
, Brad Pitt has also expressed regret about turning down the role of Neo. “I took the red pill,” he joked in 2020, referencing the choice in the film between having total clarity or remaining in blissful ignorance. “I come from a place, maybe it’s my upbringing, [where] if I didn’t get it, then it wasn’t mine. I really believe [the role] was never mine. It was someone else’s.”
is just one of the massive movies he said “no” to. “If we were doing a show on the great movies I’ve passed on, we would need two nights,” he joked.
Will Smith in
The Matrix
, Will Smith also turned down the starring role. In 2019, Smith confirmed a long-standing rumour that he rejected the Neo part in favour of a far less adored movie.
On his YouTube channel, Smith recalled meeting directors Lana and Lily Wachowski but struggling to understand their ideas for bullet-time, or the slow-motion effect that Neo masters in the movie.
[instead],” Smith confessed, referencing the notorious 1999 flop that he has spent more than 20 years regretting. “I’m not proud of it.”
up. I would have ruined it, so I did y’all a favour.”
Matt Damon in
Avatar
“I still can’t watch Thelma & Louise… it still kills me”
, which eventually starred Sam Worthington, ended up becoming the highest-grossing film in history. Meaning – drumroll, please – Damon lost out on an estimated $200m (£148m).
in 2019. He added that his biggest regret is that it may have been his only opportunity to work with Cameron. “He works so infrequently … I realised in having to say no that I was probably passing on the chance to ever work with him. So that sucked and that’s still brutal. But my kids are all eating. I’m doing OK.”
Christina Applegate in
Legally Blonde
.
“I got scared of repeating myself,” she said. “What a stupid move that was, right? [But] Reese deserved that. She did a much better job than I ever could, and so that’s her life, that’s her path.”
.
Michael Keaton in
Groundhog Day
without Bill Murray. But he wasn’t the studio’s first choice for the part of an acerbic weatherman stuck in a time loop. Rather, Michael Keaton was approached.
in 2014, Keaton admitted that he had read the script in the early Nineties but “didn’t get it”. Of the character, Keaton said: “This guy sounds like the kind of wry, sardonic, glib young man I’ve played – and it ended up being so great. But you can’t do it better than Bill Murray did it.”
Josh Hartnett in
Batman Begins
.
. They not only hired their Batman for it, they also hired my girlfriend [Scarlett Johansson] at the time. That’s when I realised relationships were formed in the fire of that first Batman film, and I should have been part of the relationship with this guy Nolan, who I felt was incredibly cool and very talented.”
Michelle Pfeiffer in
The Silence of the Lambs
, as it meant she didn’t get to work with the late filmmaker Jonathan Demme more than once.
. “There was such evil in that film. 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.”
Jodie Foster ended up winning an Oscar for the role.
Halle Berry in
Speed
.
. “I stupidly said no. But in my defence, when I read the script the bus didn’t leave the parking lot.”
Bullock ended up playing Annie, who is tasked with driving a bus rigged with explosives. Berry said that she came to regret turning down the part. “I see the movie and I’m like, arrrghhh.”
Bruce Willis in
Ghost
in 1989 – but only one of them ended up doing it. While Moore starred alongside Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg in the film, which became the highest-grossing film of 1990, Willis found the whole concept confusing. A dead man attempting to help his grieving girlfriend move on while simultaneously solving his own murder? Pfft.
star dubbed himself a “knucklehead” for passing up the role.
Eddie Murphy in
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
.
, which originally wanted him for the role eventually played by Bob Hoskins. The film – a high-concept detective comedy that fused together live-action and animation – was a bold risk for 1987, and Murphy wasn’t convinced by it.
“I was like, ‘What?’,” he said in 2003. “Animation and people sounded like bulls*** to me. Now every time I see it, I feel like an idiot.”
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