Radical Casting Decisions That Changed The Face Of Hollywood For Millennials

Robin Williams loved the Harry Potter books when they first came out, and he actually called up the first film’s director Chris Columbus to ask if he could have the part of Hagrid. He might have been in with a good chance, since Columbus had been the director of Mrs. Doubtfire. But J.K. Rowling demanded only British actors for the movie, so Robbie Coltrane got the role instead.

One of the most famous ‘what could have beens’ in film history. Will Smith turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix and worse, he turned it down in favor of Wild Wild West. Yep: one of the most critically reviled blockbusters in history. But of course, it’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Keanu Reeves as Neo now, so it all worked out for the best.

Can you imagine Woody having a voice that isn’t Tom Hanks’? But that could have happened. Pixar nearly cast Paul Newman as Woody, based on the fact that he’d played cowboys so much throughout his career. In the end Newman ended up playing another character for Pixar, Doc Hudson in Cars. It was his final role.

In 2019 while speaking on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, Rob Lowe let slip, “I turned down Grey's Anatomy. To play McDreamy. That's probably cost me $70 million!” Still, he concluded it was “just money” and said, “I watched it when it came out. And when they started calling the handsome doctor ‘McDreamy’, I was like, ‘Eh, it's not for me.’”

The Dragon Queen herself could have potentially been in the 50 Shades of Grey franchise! But Emilia Clarke turned it down because of how much nudity it would involve. She said at The Hollywood Reporter’s 2019 Drama Actress Roundtable, “The last time that I was naked on camera on [Game of Thrones] was a long time ago, and yet it is the only question that I ever get asked, because I am a woman.” Dakota Johnson got the role instead.

Leonardo DiCaprio became world-famous thanks to his role in Titanic, but did you know Matthew McConaughey auditioned for Jack as well? Kate Winslet, who of course played Rose, appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2017 and said, “I auditioned with Matthew, isn't that weird? Never said that in public before. I auditioned with Matthew, which was completely fantastic. It just wouldn't have been the whole 'Jack and Rose, Kate and Leo' thing.”

It’s hard to envision Angelina Jolie as Cher in Clueless, because Alicia Silverstone made the role her own. But it could have happened! In 2015 Vanity Fair magazine published an oral history of the movie and revealed that Jolie had been in the running for the part as well. Director Amy Heckerling, though, had her “heart set” on Silverstone.

It’s easy to see why producers wanted Henry Winkler for Grease, but he wasn’t having it. He told AARP The Magazine for its 2017/2018 issue, “I turned down the lead role in Grease. [I] didn’t want to be typecast… I turned it down intellectually instead of instinctually. Listen to your gut — it knows everything. Your head knows only some things. So I went home and had an orange juice. [John] Travolta went home and bought a plane.” 

Casting director Matthew Barry spilled all to E! News about casting The Notebook in 2021. Britney Spears, he said, was very nearly cast opposite her one-time The Mickey Mouse Club co-star Ryan Gosling, saying, “It was probably between Rachel and Britney at the time.” Eventually Spears’ audition tape ended up on eBay for no less than $1 million. 

In 2016 just as Donnie Darko was being re-released in the United Kingdom, director Richard Kelly spoke to The Guardian newspaper about who other than Jake Gyllenhaal had been in consideration for the role of Donnie. He said, “We met with Vince Vaughn four times, but he wasn’t comfortable playing 16.” It might’ve been a very different movie if he had been!

During a 2010 interview with British newspaper Metro, Bette Midler was asked, “Have you made any career mistakes?” It turned out she had: she answered, “There was Sister Act, which was written for me, but I said, ‘My fans don’t want to see me in a wimple.’ I don’t know where I got that from. Why would I say such a thing? So Whoopi [Goldberg] did it instead and, of course, she made a fortune.”

Yes, believe it or not, Miley Cyrus wasn’t the first choice to play Hannah Montana! Disney thought she was too young and offered the part to JoJo Levesque, but she turned it down. The role was given to Cyrus who, of course, went on to be absolutely massive. JoJo claimed in 2008 that she had no regrets about it though.

Nicole Kidman had her confidence shaken after she failed to get the role of Anna Scott in Notting Hill. In 2021 she sat down with Hugh Grant, whom she could have acted opposite in the film, and told him, “I really wanted the role that Julia Roberts played in Notting Hill… But I wasn't well-known enough, and I wasn't talented enough.” Awww.

Most people would agree that Tom Cruise is the Top Gun franchise, but he wasn’t the only actor offered the role of Maverick. Matthew Modine turned down the role because he disagreed with the movie’s politics, saying in a 2022 interview with website Salon, “Cruise said that he felt that Top Gun was a movie about individualism and personal strength. I just thought the movie was jingoistic.”

What? But Tom Hiddleston is Loki! Yep, but believe it or not, despite being absolutely perfect for the role of the God of Mischief, he auditioned for Thor first. There’s footage of his audition easily accessible online and looking at it, maybe he wouldn’t have been a bad Thor… but not as good as Chris Hemsworth, and likewise no other actor would’ve been as good a Loki.

This one blows the mind: originally, Bad Boys was conceived as a comedy and Saturday Night Live alumni Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz were supposed to play the two lead characters. That would have been an extremely different film, and very possibly not one that went on to the success the Will Smith/Martin Lawrence version enjoyed.

Can you imagine Meryl Streep fighting an alien? It’s not the sort of role she usually plays, but it could have been a reality. The shortlist for Ripley came down to Streep vs Sigorney Weaver, and Streep was the frontrunner, but then it fell through. Reportedly Ridley Scott thought she didn’t have the look he needed. Still, others think it was because Streep’s partner John Cazale passed away just before shooting was meant to begin.

It could have been an entirely different actress who shot to global fame with Titanic. Gwyneth Paltrow missed out on the role: she regretted it for ages. She said in a 2015 interview with Howard Stern, “I think I was really in contention for it: I was one of the last two. I look back at the choices I’ve made and think, Why the Hell did I say ‘yes’ to that? And ‘no’ to that? And you know, you look at the big picture and think, ‘There’s a universal lesson here.’ What good is it to hold on to roles?”

Lisa Edelstein came very, very close to playing Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw. She even got as far as signing a contract, but then Sarah Jessica Parker suddenly agreed to the role and just like that Edelstein was out again. The show became a massive hit, but Edelstein never watched it, because it was just too painful for her.

Twilight author Stephanie Meyer really, really wanted Henry Cavill to play Edward Cullen in an adaptation of her book. Unfortunately, he aged out of it. A heartbroken Meyer wrote on her blog in 2007 after Summit Entertainment had bought the Twilight rights, “The most disappointing thing for me is losing my perfect Edward. Henry Cavill is now 24 years old. Let us have a moment of quiet in which to mourn.”

A last-minute casting change that’s been discussed for decades now: Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty in Back to the Future. Yet five weeks into shooting, Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg decided to replace him with Michael J. Fox. Would the movie have become as iconic with Stoltz in the lead instead of Fox? We’ll never know.

The late Heath Ledger gave a beautiful performance in Brokeback Mountain, but someone else nearly got the role instead. That was Matt Damon, and according to a 2012 interview he did with Playboy magazine, he turned it down with the rather eyebrow-raising statement, “I just did a gay movie and a cowboy movie. I can’t do a gay cowboy movie now.”

Back when Jennifer Lawrence was a complete unknown, she auditioned for Serena van der Woodsen on Gossip Girl! The show’s creator Josh Schwartz told website Vulture in a 2017 interview, “We did not realize this at the time, but Jennifer Lawrence really wanted to play Serena and auditioned. This story came to us secondhand, but we were told she definitely auditioned and was bummed to not get it.” Blake Lively got it instead.

During a 2021 interview with Entertainment Weekly, The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel revealed, “We offered [the role of Andy] to Rachel McAdams three times. The studio was determined to have her, and she was determined not to do it.” Anne Hathaway was way down the list of Andy actresses… but she really wanted the part, and she got it.

To a whole generation of moviegoers Hugh Jackman is Wolverine, and no-one else need apply. But he very nearly wasn’t Wolverine at all! At first, Dougray Scott was given the role, but unfortunately he was already contracted to the movie M:I:2 and it ended up overrunning. The producers desperately sought another option and landed on Jackman, thanks in no small part to Russell Crowe, another potential Wolverine, having recommended him.

The man with the mustache was nearly the man with the hat. The role of Indiana Jones was originally offered to Tom Selleck, but he turned it down because of his commitment to his hit TV show Magnum P.I. So Steven Spielberg chose Star Wars star Harrison Ford for the role instead, and the rest is movie history.

Leah Remini made it down to the last three actresses for Monica, but lost out to Courteney Cox. Cox had actually been up for the part of Rachel, before she’d asked if she could play Monica instead! Remini did actually show up in Friends eventually, though. She can be seen in the episode, “The One With the Birth.”

During a 2018 appearance on Live With Kelly and Ryan in New York City, Joe Alwyn revealed that as a kid he’d auditioned for the role of Sam in Christmas hit Love Actually. He said, “I didn’t get in, obviously, but I do remember meeting Hugh Grant and [writer-director] Richard Curtis and sitting down and reading some scenes.”

Macaulay Culkin isn’t a fan of The Big Bang Theory, even though he was asked to be in it. The former child star said in a 2018 interview with The Joe Rogan Experience, “They pursued me for The Big Bang Theory, and I said no. It was kind of like, the way the pitch was, ‘Alright, these two astrophysicist nerds, and a pretty girl lives with them. Yoinks!’ That was the pitch.” He concluded, “I’d have hundreds of millions of dollars right now if I did that gig. But at the same time, I’d be bashing my head against the wall.”

Christina Applegate really regretted turning down the lead in Legally Blonde. Back in 2015 she told the website ETOnline, “I got scared of kind of repeating myself. What a stupid move that was, right?” But she had no hard feelings towards the actress who replaced her, saying, “Reese deserved that. She did a much better job than I ever could.”

Most people know that Bob Odenkirk was originally considered for the role of Michael Scott, but they don’t know that Paul Giamatti was too! He was the preferred casting choice of Kevin Reilly, who was a programmer at NBC back in 2003. Giamatti turned it down, though, and eventually the role went to Steve Carrell, who made it his own.

Josh Schwartz, the creator of The O.C., spilled all about the casting process for the show in 2021. Speaking on a fan podcast he said that Olivia Wilde had auditioned for Marissa and she had been “super-compelling.” But the role went to the 17-year-old Mischa Barton because she’d “had a bit more of that tragic air to her.”

Can you believe Ross from Friends nearly played a Will Smith role? David Schwimmer himself confirmed it in a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. He was offered the part, but he was directing a movie at the time, Since You’ve Been Gone, and so it “wasn’t even like a choice” for him. It’s fun to imagine the universe where he did take the role, though!

This one could have changed Hollywood forever: as you no doubt already know, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt fell in love on the set of Mr and Mrs Smith. This was despite Pitt being married to Jennifer Aniston; it kicked off one of the most famous love triangles of the modern age. If Stefani had landed the role instead, as she wanted, that may never have happened!

Imagine a world where Wolverine was James Bond! Hugh Jackman told Variety magazine in a 2017 interview, “I was about to do X-Men 2 and a call came from my agent asking if I’d be interested in Bond. I just felt at the time that the scripts had become so unbelievable and crazy, and I felt like they needed to become grittier and real.” Fans finally got that when Daniel Craig took the role.

When Dawson’s Creek turned 20 in 2018, creator Kevin Williamson opened up to Cosmopolitan magazine about who had nearly been cast in the main roles. He remembered that Katherine Heigl had auditioned for Jen, and said, “She gave a great audition, I remember we were all sort of like, ‘Wow, she's good.’” But the role went to Michelle Williams in the end.

Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get. And this was certainly the case when Forrest Gump was being made. John Travolta was up for the lead role, but he turned it down to play Vincent in Pulp Fiction, while Tom Hanks got the role of Forrest. Both choices proved to be good ones.

Tobey Maguire had played the webbed wonder in the first movie, but things nearly went awry when it came to the sequel. Maguire had sustained a back injury and was also asking for more money, which made producers want to recast him. They were very close to giving Jake Gyllenhaal the role when things worked out with Maguire after all. Gyllenhaal was in a later Spider-Man movie, though!

Katie Holmes could have had a very different career. Before she was cast in Dawson’s Creek, she turned down the lead role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which of course went on to become one of the most iconic TV shows of all time. Who knows what might have happened had she, rather than Sarah Michelle Gellar, been Buffy?

Producers wanted O.J. Simpson to play the title character in The Terminator, but director James Cameron wasn’t having it. He told The Guardian in 2017 that his reaction to the idea had been, “You're going to have this black athlete chasing this white girl around L.A. with a… knife and a gun? We’re not doing that.” That comment would of course become bitterly ironic later.