10 Actors who turned down legendary film roles
Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix, Ian McKellen as Gandalf in Lord of The Rings, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman… These are all career-defining roles that we’ll remember forever. Did you know that none of these actors were the director’s first choice? See which actors made the regrettable decision to turn down leads in some of the biggest blockbusters of all time.
+Will Smith turned down the role of Neo in the Matrix because he was filming Wild Wild West.
+Not Al Pacino, but Jack Nicholson was originally asked to play Michael Corleone in The Godfather. Nicholson turned it down because he thought that ‘Indians should play roles written for Indians and Italians should do the same’.
+One of Leonardo DiCaprio’s biggest regrets is that he couldn’t play the role of Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights because he was filming Titanic. We think he made the right decision anyway.
+Kevin Costner made quite a bad decision when he chose his project ‘Waterworld’ (one of the biggest bombs in film history) over taking the legendary role of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption.
+It must be painful to have turned down roles in two of the biggest movies of our time. Sean Connery was offered to play Gandalf in Lord of The Rings and Morpheus in The Matrix. Bad choice.
+Matt Damon turned down the role of Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight because he was working on Clint Eastwood’s Invictus.
+Imagine how different Ferris Bueller’s Day Off would have been if young Johnny Depp played Ferris! At least it would have been a lot sexier (no offense, Matthew Broderick). Depp turned down the role.
+Molly Ringwald was one of the biggest teen movie stars of the 80′s, but after that we haven’t heard a lot from her. It could have been different if she accepted the leads in Pretty Woman and Ghost, the movies that went on to make Julia Roberts and Demi Moore huge stars.
+Lovely Emily Blunt turned down the role of Black Widow in Iron Man 2, which later went to Scarlett Johansson, because she was working on Gulliver’s Travels. Unfortunately that movie flopped big time and Scarlett went on to play Black Widow in The Avengers and a ton of Avengers spin-off movies.
+Harrison Ford was not the first actor that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas thought of for the role of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Tom Selleck was asked first, but he was too busy working on Magnum P.I.SOURCE:
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