5. BETTE DAVIS
Turned down the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). The role went to Vivien Leigh. Davis thought that her co-star was going to be Errol Flynn, with whom she refused to work.
6. KIRK DOUGLAS
Turned down the role of Kid Shelleen in Cat Ballou (1965). The role won an Academy Award for Lee Marvin. Douglas’s agent convinced him not to accept the comedic role of the drunken gunfighter.
7. W.C. FIELDS
Could have played the title role in The Wizard of Oz (1939). The part was written for Fields, who would have played the wizard as a cynical con man. But he turned down the part, purportedly because he wanted $100,000 and MGM only offered him $75,000. However, a letter signed by Fields’s agent asserts that Fields rejected the offer in order to devote all his time to writing You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man. Frank Morgan ended up playing the wizard.
8. JANE FONDA
Turned down Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The role of Bonnie Parker went to Faye Dunaway. Fonda, living in France at the time, did not want to move to the United States for the role.
9. CARY GRANT
Producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, who had bought the film rights to Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, originally approached Cary Grant about playing 007. Grant declined because he did not want to become involved in a film series. Instead, Sean Connery was cast as Bond, starting with Dr No (1962). Fleming’s comment on this casting choice: ‘He’s not exactly what I had in mind’.
10.-11. GENE HACKMAN and MICHELLE PFEIFFER
Orion Pictures acquired the film rights to Silence of the Lambs in 1988 because Gene Hackman had expressed an interest in directing and writing the screenplay for it. He would also star as serial killer Hannibal Lecter. By mid-1989, Hackman had dropped out of the project. Jonathan Demme took over as director and offered the female lead of FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling to Michelle Pfeiffer, with whom he had worked in Married to the Mob (1988). Pfeiffer felt the film was too dark and decided not to be in it. When Silence of the Lambs was made in 1990, the lead roles were played by Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. Both won Academy Awards for their performances.
12. ALAN LADD
Turned down the role of Jett Rink in Giant (1956). The role went to James Dean. Ladd felt he was too old for the part.
13. HEDY LAMARR
Turned down the role of Ilsa in Casablanca (1942). Ingrid Bergman took over and, with Bogart, made film history. Lamarr had not wanted to work with an unfinished script.
14. BURT LANCASTER
Turned down the lead in Ben-Hur (1959). The role of Judah Ben-Hur went to Charlton Heston, who won an Academy Award and added another hit to his career of spectacular blockbusters.
15. MYRNA LOY
Turned down the lead (Ellie Andrews) opposite Clark Gable (Peter Warne) in It Happened One Night (1934). The role led to an Academy Award for Claudette Colbert. A previous film set on a bus had just failed, and Loy thought the film would not have a chance.
16. MICHAEL MADSEN
After his terrifyingly menacing performance in Reservoir Dogs (1992), Michael Madsen was offered the role of Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s next film as director, Pulp Fiction (1994). He turned it down because he was involved in the making of Wyatt Earp (1994) in which he plays Virgil Earp. Pulp Fiction was an enormous success with audiences and critics. Wyatt Earp wasn’t. John Travolta, who played Vincent Vega, found his career on the up and up while Madsen found himself playing parts in a series of B pictures. ‘I wanted to take a walk down to the OK Corral,’ Madsen has been quoted as saying. ‘If I’d known how long a walk it was gonna be, I’d have taken a cab.’
17.-18. EWAN MCGREGOR and WILL SMITH
Both of these stars turned down the role of Neo in the blockbuster science fiction epic The Matrix, which eventually went to Keanu Reeves. McGregor starred as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace instead, while Smith – who went on to star in the film version of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot – admitted, ‘I watched Keanu’s performance – and very rarely do I say this – but I would have messed it up. I would have absolutely messed up The Matrix. At that point I wasn’t smart enough as an actor to let the movie be.’
19. STEVE MCQUEEN
When Paul Newman asked McQueen to star opposite him in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), McQueen insisted on top billing. When his demand was turned down, McQueen refused to appear in the film. Robert Redford played Sundance and became the most sought-after star of the 1970’s. McQueen turned down the lead role of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection (1971) because he felt the part was too similar to the tough cop he had played in Bullitt (1969). Gene Hackman got the part and won an Oscar for it. Finally, when director Francis Ford Coppola offered McQueen the starring role of Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now (1979), McQueen declined because he did not want to spend 16 weeks – Coppolla’s original shooting schedule – on location in the Philippine jungles, away from his new bride, Ali MacGraw. Martin Sheen, who accepted the role, ended up spending a year and a half on location and almost died from a massive heart attack during the filming. Nonetheless, he turned in an electrifying performance.
20. GREGORY PECK
The producer of High Noon (1952), Stanley Kramer, originally offered the role of Will Kane, the retiring marshal who stays in town to confront the gunmen out to kill him, to Gregory Peck. Peck turned it down because he thought it was too similar to the part of Jimmy Ringo, an aging gunslinger haunted by his own reputation, which he had played in The Gunfighter (1950). Several other actors, including Montgomery Clift, Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando were approached before Gary Cooper was signed to play Kane. He went on to win an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance.
21. GEORGE RAFT
Turned down the main roles in High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Casablanca (1942), which became three of Humphrey Bogart’s most famous roles. Raft rejected the Sam Spade role in The Maltese Falcon because he did not want to work with director John Huston, an unknown at that time.
22. ROBERT REDFORD
Turned down the role of Ben Braddock in The Graduate (1967). The role made an instant star of Dustin Hoffman. Redford thought he could not project the right amount of naiveté.
23. EVA MARIE SAINT
Known for her selectivity in choosing roles, she erred when she turned down the central role in The Three Faces of Eve (1957) after reading an early version of the script. Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her performance in the film.
– R.S. & C.F.
15 Film Scenes Left on the Cutting Room Floor
1 FRANKENSTEIN (1931) In one scene, the monster (Boris Karloff) walks through a forest and comes upon a little girl, Maria, who is throwing flowers into a pond. The monster joins her in the activity but soon runs out of flowers. At a loss for something to throw into the water, he looks at Maria and moves towards her. In all American prints of the movie, the scene ends here. But as originally filmed, the action continues to show the monster grabbing Maria, hurling her into the lake, and then departing in confusion when Maria fails to float as the flowers did. This bit was deleted