It's rare to find a movie project that doesn't accrue a thousand-thespian-long conga line
during casting.
But these are the roles that some really famous actors rejected.
It seems like no one in Hollywood wanted these parts!
The true hallmark of an actor's actor is the kind who only does a movie because of an unshakable
interest in their character's transformation over the course of a narrative.
But The Notebook's Noah Calhoun has none of that growth.
He begins the movie in love with the pretty blonde girl and ends up in love with the same
pretty blonde girl, making the role an unattractive one for most "serious" actors.
This prompted most thespians to pass on the part, at least according to Nicholas Sparks,
the author of the novel that the film was based on.
This left the door wide open for Ryan Gosling to slide in and win over the world's heart
in a single romantic chick flick.
What do Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, and Laura Dern all have in common?
It turns out these three actresses were all once on the short list for the part of Clarice
Starling, a role we now firmly associate with Jodie Foster thanks to her amazing performance
in The Silence of the Lambs.
But Foster only got the part because Pfeiffer and Ryan rejected the script with extreme
prejudice due to a shared distaste for the film's violent and disturbed nature, which
director Jonathan Demme revealed at an Austin Film Festival interview.
"So um the script goes to Meg Ryan.
And uh word comes back very quickly like 'good God I could never do a movie like that.'
She was slightly offended."
While Demme wanted Dern for the part, she was relatively unknown at the time.
So he ultimately went with Foster, at the gentle behest of the studio.
If you thought The Lord of the Rings had a substantial lack of Nicolas Cage in it, you're
not the only one.
Director Peter Jackson thought Aragorn would be perfectly portrayed by none other than
everyone's favorite National Treasure.
And Jackson also thought that Russell Crowe would fit Aragorn's lofty role equally well.
Also crossing Jackson's mind as the perfect Aragorn was none other than Daniel Day-Lewis.
As you can tell, Jackson had a lengthy wish list of actors for this role, but that list
didn't include Viggo Mortensen, the guy who ultimately landed the part.
As for why the previously mentioned actors didn't work out, Cage didn't want franchise
obligations to distract from time with his kids, Crowe had prior commitments, and Day-Lewis
never publicly stated his reason.
Thankfully, Mortensen pulled off the job just fine.
When all is said and done, the real heroes of the Fifty Shades franchise are the casting
directors.
They're the brave souls who had to wade through the bowels of Hollywood to find a pair of
actors willing to denigrate themselves for the adaptations of one of the most embarrassing
novel trilogies of all time.
Fifty Shades of Grey was always destined to be a kinky test in pain tolerance, if that
pain was derived from permanent career embarrassment.
The actors who couldn't reject the role of billionaire sadist Christian Grey fast enough
included Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Ryan Gosling.
"Any chance of Fifty Shades of Grey?
Everybody wants to know."
"I have no, what is this book that everyone's talking about it seems very popular."
As for the submissive end of the casting spectrum, the actresses who weren't too keen on playing
Anastasia Steele include Lucy Hale, Chloe Bridges, and Emma Watson.
The fight for who would get the role of Michael Corleone was actually a rather small scuffle,
fought mainly between director Francis Ford Coppola and his studio overheads.
The studio petitioned hard for actors like Martin Sheen and Jack Nicholson, but after
Nicholson turned down the part and Coppola stood his ground, the studio was forced to
entertain his desire to cast Al Pacino.
In a 2004 interview with Movieline, Nicholson explained his decision by saying,
"Back then I believed that Indians should play Indians and Italians should play Italians."
Nicholson's sentiment turned out well for the film, but even Pacino didn't originally
want the part.
He knew that nobody wanted to cast him except for Coppola, whom Pacino thought was "a bit
mad."
Luckily Pacino and the studio both came around.
Similar to Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight is another case of an embarrassing book turning
into an embarrassing movie that no one wanted to embarrass themselves by starring in.
Thus, a list of actresses who rejected the role of Bella Swan is no surprise.
That list includes Emily Browning, Frances Bean Cobain, and Emmy Rossum.
Their reasons ranged from general disinterest to downright offense at how bad the script
was.
Considering how the poorly-received finished product turned out, one can only imagine how
grateful they must be for their past selves' well-warranted foresight.