When an actor wins an Oscar for playing a role, like Anthony Hopkins for playing Hannibal Lecter or Julie Andrews for playing Mary Poppins, they become inextricably tied to that character. But casting producers rarely get it right straight away. Before the perfect candidate lands a part and wows the Academy, a bunch of other actors are considered for the role.
Tom Hanks wasn’t the first choice to play Forrest Gump. Christoph Waltz wasn’t the first choice to play Hans Landa. These stars could’ve been cast to play different roles that ended up earning Oscars for other actors.
10 Leonardo DiCaprio As Col. Hans Landa In Inglourious Basterds
It’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Christoph Waltz playing the role of Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, but according to MTV, Tarantino originally wrote the part for Leonardo DiCaprio. When the script was complete and it actually came to casting, he decided the role should be played by a German-speaking actor.
The World War II movie had another casting choice that could have radically changed the film. Adam Sandler was the original choice for Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz but turned it down to star in his old roommate Judd Apatow’s movie Funny People. The film director Eli Roth stepped in and gave a memorably unhinged performance as the Nazi-hating sergeant.
9 Emma Watson As Mia In La La Land
The lead roles in Damien Chazelle’s Golden Age-style musical La La Land ended up reuniting Crazy, Stupid, Love and Gangster Squad co-stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. But according to the BBC, they weren’t the first choices.
Chazelle explained, “There was a moment where Emma Watson and Miles Teller were doing it. Neither of those casting things wound up lasting or working out.” Watson and Teller's loss proved to be beneficial to Stone and Gosling, as both were nominated for Academy Awards with Stone winning Best Actress.
8 Liam Neeson As Abraham Lincoln In Lincoln
When Steven Spielberg first approached Daniel Day-Lewis about playing Abraham Lincoln in a biopic, Day-Lewis turned down the offer, as he didn’t think he was right for the part. So, Spielberg instead cast his Schindler’s List star Liam Neeson, who remained attached through years of development.
Neeson explained in an interview with GQ that he had “a thunderbolt moment” during a table read that convinced him he was the wrong person to play Lincoln. After the table read, he advised Spielberg to recast the role. This time, Day-Lewis accepted the part and ultimately won his third Oscar for it.
7 Julia Roberts As Viola In Shakespeare In Love
The tragedy of Gwyneth Paltrow’s involvement in Shakespeare in Love is that her Best Actress win launched her to superstardom, but working with the infamous Harvey Weinstein left her disillusioned with show business.
According to the Daily Mail, the role of the Bard’s fictional muse Viola initially attracted Julia Roberts. However, Roberts pulled out when Daniel Day-Lewis departed the role of Shakespeare. Joseph Fiennes was eventually cast as the young Elizabethan playwright and joined Paltrow as one of the most memorable romantic couples of the 1990s.
6 Brad Pitt As Dicky Eklund In The Fighter
While Mark Wahlberg was attached to play boxer Micky Ward from the beginning, according to Variety, the casting of his half-brother and trainer Dicky Eklund went back and forth over the course of The Fighter’s development.
First, Matt Damon was attached. Then, Brad Pitt took over. Eventually, Christian Bale played the part and won Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars for his performance. Bale would later reunite with director David O. Russell on American Hustle and earned another Oscar nomination for his work.
5 Michelle Pfeiffer As Clarice Starling In The Silence Of The Lambs
Jodie Foster was interested in the role of Clarice Starling from the beginning, but Jonathan Demme wasn’t convinced she could pull it off. Instead, he offered the role to Michelle Pfeiffer, with whom he’d worked on Married to the Mob, but she turned it down.
Pfeiffer told IndieWire, “With Silence of the Lambs, I was trepidatious. There was such evil in that film. The thing I most regret is missing the opportunity to do another film with Jonathan. 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.” A year later, Pfeiffer would take on her most famous role, Catwoman, in Batman Returns after Annette Bening had to leave because she was pregnant.
4 Samuel L. Jackson As Alonzo Harris In Training Day
According to Mental Floss, Davis Guggenheim was originally set to direct the gritty police thriller Training Day. Guggenheim cast Samuel L. Jackson as Alonzo Harris, the role that eventually went to Denzel Washington, and Matt Damon as Jake Hoyt, the role that eventually went to Ethan Hawke.
When Washington became attached to the project that would eventually earn him an Oscar, Guggenheim alleges that the actor had him replaced with Antoine Fuqua. Washington would later reunite with Fuqua in the Equalizer movies and The Magnificent Seven remake.
3 Ursula Andress As Sophie In Sophie’s Choice
As soon as Meryl Streep got a hold of the script for Alan J. Pakula’s powerful drama Sophie’s Choice, she desperately wanted to play the title character and began lobbying for it.
But according to Karina Longworth’s 2013 book Meryl Streep: Anatomy of an Actor, when William Styron wrote the novel that Sophie’s Choice is based on, he had Dr. No’s “Bond girl” Ursula Andress in mind for Sophie if a film adaptation was to be produced. Streep prevailed and won the second of her three Oscars for her work.
2 Sacha Baron Cohen As Freddie Mercury In Bohemian Rhapsody
Sacha Baron Cohen was announced to play Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in a biopic back in 2010, and planned a warts-and-all portrait of the iconic singer’s hard-partying personal life. Since the surviving band members were producing the movie, that wasn’t going to fly.
According to NME, Baron Cohen said that Brian May is an “amazing musician,” but “not a great movie producer.” While the Borat star wanted to adapt the wild stories about Mercury’s drug use and partying, Queen “wanted to protect their legacy as a band.”
1 John Travolta As Forrest Gump
Tom Hanks won his second Oscar in a row for playing the title role in Forrest Gump (after winning the previous year for Philadelphia). According to the BBC, John Travolta was the original choice for the role of Forrest, but he turned it down.
Travolta ended up getting a career comeback with an equally iconic role in a different 1994 hit: heroin-addicted hitman Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. The Grease star was nominated for Best Actor for his performance but lost to Hanks for the role Travolta declined.
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August 06, 2021 at 12:00AM
