Casting is a key ingredient in the secret sauce of great filmmaking.
In the best cases, a certain performer filling a certain character's shoes can turn a part
into a franchise-leading phenomenon.
But the real magic is in synergy, when several actors click; there's no X-Files without David
Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, and what would the original Star Wars movies have been without
Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford together?
But sometimes an actor's got to go.
It's awful for the would-be star who watches the role end up becoming part of a massive
hit while their replacement reaps the rewards — and it's just as bad for the actors who
willfully walk away from the role of a lifetime, never to be heard from again.
The almost King of Gondor The Lord of the Rings is a sprawling epic
with no single lead character.
The entire point of the film trilogy is that it takes the combined strength and skill of
many to overcome the Dark Lord Sauron.
That said, there's one character that stands out as the film's mightiest hero, a great
warrior who also just so happens to be the heir to the most powerful kingdom in Middle-earth:
Aragorn, son of Arathorn.
It's the type of role that can turn an unknown into a worldwide superstar — and it did
just that for Viggo Mortensen.
Which is all too bad for Stuart Townsend, who will always be remembered as the man who
almost played Aragorn – if he's remembered at all.
Townsend was director Peter Jackson's original choice to play the man who would be King of
Gondor, but he was let go only a few days into filming.
According to Jackson, Townsend was simply too young to be playing the veteran warrior.
To this day, Mortensen is synonymous with the character.
As for poor Townsend?
He's gotten parts here and there, but otherwise, he's just another casualty of the War of the
Ring.
The dragons' other mother It's become one of the biggest and most influential
series on television, but Game of Thrones wasn't always a sure thing.
To try to bring the books to the screen, HBO ordered a pilot episode before the rest of
the series was shot — and it was a disaster.
Fortunately, HBO chose to stick with the project.
Old scenes were cut, new scenes were written, the director was replaced, and several cast
members were swapped out.
Of the latter, none were more significant than the recasting of Daenerys Targaryen,
one of the most important characters in the entire story.
Tamzin Merchant played the role in the pilot.
For undisclosed reasons, however, Emilia Clarke was brought onboard to take her place.
Game of Thrones has gone on to become HBO's most successful series, and Clarke has taken
on starring roles in everything from romantic comedies to Star Wars, even as she continues
to portray the mother of dragons.
Merchant, meanwhile, has continued to work steadily, but is still waiting for her big
breakout role.
"I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen."
Messing with the timeline Back to the Future was always a zany concept:
a time-traveling DeLorean unites an '80s teen with his teenage parents in the 1950s, and
shenanigans ensue.
It went on to become a defining movie of the decade, and turned lead actor Michael J. Fox
into a superstar — but Fox almost wasn't in the timeline at all, since he wasn't the
original Marty McFly.
In fact, Eric Stoltz had already shot weeks' worth of footage in the role before being
let go by the director.
Fox rocketed to household name status, while Stoltz settled into steady work on TV and
in indie films.
He did get a Golden Globe nomination in 1985 for Mask, but for all that talent, he never
had the star power of a time-traveling DeLorean.
True of us all.
"I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet."
Mission impossible for this mutant X-Men launched the modern wave of superhero
movies when it was released in 2000.
And while there are quite a few of the titular heroes represented in that first movie, none
was more popular and more enduring than Wolverine.
The cigar-chomping Canadian has always been a comic book favorite, so it was absolutely
essential that the character be cast with the right actor.
That's why the filmmakers went with Dougray Scott.
The Scottish actor was an unknown at the time, but since the whole X-Men film was being cast
with relative newcomers, he seemed like a great choice to bring the gruff living weapon
with the adamantium skeleton to life.
The only problem was the film that got him attention in the first place — Mission:
Impossible 2.
The film reportedly ran over schedule, forcing Scott to stay behind on that project.
Hugh Jackman was cast instead — the start of what would be a long and successful career
in and out of superhero movies.
Scott, meanwhile, has never achieved the same level of fame.
What a couple of claws might have done for him, we'll never know.
"It's part of my past, I never really, you know…
I never really think about it to be honest with you."
Blown away by Arnold When James Cameron set out to write and direct
the first Terminator film, he was a nobody.
His biggest directorial effort up to that time was Piranha II, a movie he was fired
from which featured actor Lance Henriksen.
Cameron liked Henriksen, and envisioned him as the titular cyborg for Terminator — but
then along came an Austrian bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger, who'd just come off
of playing the lead character in Conan the Barbarian.
With his sheer physical presence, he was the obvious choice to play the Terminator.
In every way, The Terminator was Schwarzenegger's movie, and it vaulted him into the upper echelon
of the decade's action stars.
Henriksen, meanwhile, has stayed busy over the years, albeit in the types of character
actor roles that don't spawn catchphrases or multimillion-dollar sequels.
"I'll be back."
A Tarantino twist in casting Quentin Tarantino is one of the most meticulous
craftsmen in the business: he writes his own scripts, and he knows exactly how he wants
to shoot them.
Tarantino knows that a scene must be tuned with perfect precision, and that includes
perfect casting.
Michael Madsen turned in a memorable performance as Mr. Blonde in Tarantino's film Reservoir
Dogs, so when he began filling out the roster for his follow-up feature Pulp Fiction, Tarantino
wanted Madsen back.
Madsen was forced to turn down the role in favor of a part in Kevin Costner's Western
Wyatt Earp.
It probably made sense at the time: Costner was an established star, whereas Tarantino
was still an indie filmmaker.
In Madsen's place, John Travolta was cast as Vincent Vega.
It was exactly what Travolta needed: he earned an Oscar nomination and a second wind for
his career.
Wyatt Earp, meanwhile, went nowhere.
Madsen has an impressive slew of credits to his name, but has never attracted the type
of fame or acclaim Travolta enjoyed post-Pulp.
Transforming lead actress Megan Fox was still largely unknown when she
was cast in the lead female role in Michael Bay's 2007 film Transformers.
The film was a huge box office hit, and Fox became a worldwide star.
Her return in the 2009 sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, cemented her status
as one of blockbuster cinema's hottest new stars.
There was nowhere for her to go but up.
Until it all came crashing down.
Fox was unceremoniously fired from the third film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Initially intended to return, she was thrown out for being too difficult to work with,
and for her criticism of Bay.
While new lead actress technically took on a brand new character, this was still the
girlfriend of Shia LaBeouf's hero — effectively the same role.
Fox's career has never been quite the same since.
Her most high-profile outings have been in the rebooted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
series and the ill-fated Jonah Hex; otherwise, she hasn't seen many starring roles in films,
blockbuster or otherwise.
Sometimes, it isn't just being replaced that damages your career, it's the reasons why.
"You know, I tell it like it is."
That's a negative, Ghost rider!
Matthew Modine's movie career was just heating up in the early 1980s.
He seemed like a great candidate to star in a new patriotic action movie titled Top Gun,
but Modine chose to walk away from the offer, since he was uncomfortable with what he felt
was an unabashedly pro-military film.
Instead, the job went to Tom Cruise, who used his performance as Maverick to help launch
one of the most successful movie careers in history.
Cruise became one of the industry's biggest stars, and Top Gun was the turning point — the
movie that changed his life forever.
Modine hasn't had the same luck.
He's carved out an impressive career in his own right, turning in acclaimed performances
in a long list of projects that includes Full Metal Jacket and the hit Netflix series Stranger
Things, but he's kept a much lower profile than he might have if he'd taken that fateful
role.
He refused Top Gun out of principle, but it didn't come without cost.
What a very maverick thing to do.
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