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Some of the most iconic roles in cinema could have turned out very differently…
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00:00It's well known that the majority of films aren't cast with the director or studio's
00:04first choices for the roles.
00:06The sheer number of big budget movies being made means that most will have to make do
00:10with the second or third choice instead.
00:13Most of the time this isn't particularly noticeable, but sometimes when you find out
00:16who the role was originally intended for, suddenly it just makes so much more sense.
00:21So I'm Amy from WhatCulture and here are 10 movie roles obviously designed for other
00:26actors.
00:2710.
00:28Jerry Maguire in Jerry Maguire, Tom Hanks
00:32In recent years Cameron Crowe has admitted that his first choice to play conflicted sports
00:36agent Jerry Maguire would have been Tom Hanks, not Tom Cruise.
00:40In fact, the role was specifically written with Hanks in mind.
00:44However, at the time, a year before shooting was due to begin, Hanks was focused on developing
00:48his directorial debut, That Thing You Do, and Hat to Pass.
00:52The role ended up going to Cruise, who then spent the next nine months developing the part
00:56with Crowe.
00:57The result is iconic, and it might be hard now to imagine anyone else playing the role.
01:01Except for the fact that Maguire's whole feel-good character arc is quintessentially
01:061990s Tom Hanks.
01:08The cynic with a soft heart, the good guy in a rough patch who just needs the right inspiration
01:12to come out on top.
01:14Sandwiched between 1993's Sleepless in Seattle and 1998's You've Got Mail, Jerry Maguire is
01:20exactly the kind of movie that Hanks was making at the time.
01:239.
01:24Ruby Rod in The Fifth Element, Prince
01:27Remember DJ Ruby Rod in Luke Besson's gonzo sci-fi?
01:31High camp, high-pitched voice, dressed like he was, well, high?
01:35The part was written specifically for the late Prince.
01:38Costumes and props had been designed with him in mind, even down to the mole on Rod's
01:42cheek.
01:43Of course, Rod was actually played by comedian Chris Tucker.
01:46The official version of the story is that Prince's touring schedule prevented him from
01:49shooting the movie.
01:50But costumer Jean-Paul Gaultier has a different perspective.
01:54During the singer's Paris tour dates, Besson got Gaultier to go and meet Prince and show
01:58him some sketches.
01:59Of the experience, Gaultier said, quote,
02:01In broken English and with my strong French accent, I tried my best to make conversation.
02:06I showed him my drawings, but he didn't say a word.
02:09I had had a really funny idea for a costume with netting, through which quite long body hair
02:13would pass through, and I had done the front and back versions of it.
02:17So I explained this to Prince.
02:19And viewers, I apologize, I'm about to do a really bad French accent, but trust me,
02:22it has a point.
02:23It's going somewhere.
02:24So I explained to Prince, uh, it is a fake hair, you know?
02:29The back is made of that, the back, uh, the focule, uh, a very big, uh, focule, end
02:35quote.
02:36And yes, I promise that was a quote.
02:37He explained that Prince gave him an odd look and then left without a word, and Gaultier
02:41later found out from Besson that Prince had pulled out of the movie, stating that the
02:45costumes were a bit too effeminate, and that he wasn't best pleased
02:49with Gaultier's lack of respect.
02:50And here's where the bad accent comes in.
02:52It turns out that where Gaultier had been saying focule, meaning fake ass, Prince had instead
02:57heard the words, fuck you.
02:59So yeah, you can't really blame a guy too much for pulling out of a movie where his first
03:03meeting with the costume designer, he thought he was repeatedly being told to go fuck himself.
03:07Eight, Dolores Wilson in Sister Act, Bette Midler.
03:13When screenwriter Paul Rudnick pitched the movie that would later become Sister Act to
03:16producer Scott Rudin, it was with veteran actor and Broadway singer Bette Midler in mind.
03:21Midler, however, passed on the film, convinced for some reason that her fans wouldn't want
03:25to see her play a nun.
03:27It made no sense.
03:28Dolores wasn't a nun, she was a brassy lounge singer forced to masquerade as one.
03:33Sister Mary Clarence is only Sister Mary Clarence while she's in witness protection, and she
03:37uses her showbiz instincts to transform the fortunes of the convent's choir.
03:42The part wasn't just written for Midler, it was made for her.
03:45Well, we all know how it goes from there.
03:47Eventually, the film went to Whoopi Goldberg, and it also went through so many writers and
03:51so many drafts that Rudnick requested he be credited with a pseudonym, as it no longer
03:55resembled the movie he pitched.
03:57You know what survived the rewrites, though?
03:59Dolores Wilson, aka Sister Mary Clarence.
04:02That's right, the role where Bruce Willis somewhat famously plays a douchebag version
04:17of himself wasn't actually written for Bruce Willis at all.
04:20Writer Art Linson and director Barry Levinson's Hollywood satire follows Robert De Niro's
04:25stressed-out film producer Ben from set to boardroom to set.
04:29With many other memorable moments, it features a subplot in which Bruce Willis turns up to
04:33shoot Ben's movie with an impressively luxurious beard which he refuses to shave off, despite
04:38it being completely inappropriate for the part.
04:41Well, that part was originally intended for Alec Baldwin, because it was actually based
04:45on Alec Baldwin himself.
04:47You see, what just happened is a fictionalised retelling of the stories from Linson's own
04:51memoir of the same name.
04:52In his book, Linson recounts Baldwin turning up to a shoot in 1997 with an impressively
04:57luxurious beard which he refused to shave off.
05:00Baldwin's character was a fashion photographer whose plane crashes in the wilderness.
05:04His having the beard at the end of the movie made sense, but having it from the beginning
05:07made no sense whatsoever.
05:09Baldwin didn't quite see this, though.
05:11In the end, Baldwin had to be threatened with being fired from the movie and sued by the
05:15studio before he actually agreed to shave it off.
05:17De Niro, who was also a producer on the film, had originally approached Baldwin to play himself,
05:22thinking his famously prickly friend might have developed a bit of a sense of humour about
05:26the whole thing.
05:27Judging by the fact that Willis was cast in his place, I think we can all confidently say
05:31no such sense of humour had been developed.
05:346.
05:35Russell Hammond in Almost Famous
05:37Brad Pitt
05:39Writer-director Cameron Crowe wrote the script for Almost Famous with Brad Pitt in mind for the
05:43pivotal role of Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond.
05:46Not only that, but he also managed to secure Pitt for the role, working with him for over
05:50four months in developing the character.
05:52However, Pitt pulled out of the film before shooting could begin, and Crowe rather frankly
05:57admits that he cried when he found out, worrying how it might look for his career.
06:01Billy Crudup was cast in his place and did a fantastic job in a career-making role.
06:05There's even an argument to be made that Pitt, an established movie star by that point
06:09with a ridiculous level of cool, wouldn't have been able to deliver the vulnerability or
06:13the callousness that Hammond exhibits.
06:15Nonetheless, there are multiple references in the finished film to Hammond being too good-looking
06:20and a golden god, and these lines were very clearly intended to be delivered by the blonde,
06:25godlike-looking Pitt.
06:265.
06:27Peter Weyland in Prometheus
06:29Max von Sydow
06:31Ridley Scott's long-awaited return to the Alien franchise began life purely as a backstory
06:36to his original film.
06:37The initial thoughts on what this film should look like were very different from how it
06:41actually turned out, and at one point it was going to quite heavily involve an elderly
06:46Peter Weyland, the founder of the Weyland Corporation.
06:48He was meant to be a man of advancing years, seeking to use his vast fortune to stave off
06:53death.
06:54Finally, Scott had legendary actor Max von Sydow in mind to play Weyland.
06:58He was 86 at the time, which is age-appropriate for the role.
07:01However, a subsequent draft of the script called for a younger version of Weyland to appear.
07:05Weighing up the alternatives, it was decided to go with the equally formidable but considerably
07:10younger Guy Pearce, who could appear au naturel in the flashback part of the story and then
07:14be aged up with makeup for his other appearances.
07:17Pearce was cast, and the production proceeded, and then a further draft of the script cut
07:21the flashback sequence entirely, leaving Scott with the prospect of Pearce playing a character
07:25twice his own age for no good reason.
07:28With an actor of Pearce's calibre, it's not the worst thing in the world, but the old-age
07:32prosthetics the team used sort of did make him look like a mummy at times.
07:36Moral of the story?
07:37Maybe they should have stuck with Max.
07:404.
07:41Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part 3 – Winona Ryder
07:45The Godfather Part 3 is over 30 years old now, and a lot of critical narratives have
07:49grown up around this movie.
07:51You know them by heart, it was too rushed, there wasn't a story, Francis Ford Coppola
07:56did it purely for the money, it didn't live up to the quality, blah blah blah.
08:00One thing almost everyone agrees on, though, is that Sofia Coppola, the director's daughter,
08:05was a disastrous choice to play pivotal plot point Mary Corleone, the daughter of the
08:09trilogy's protagonist.
08:10The critics savaged her performance in a way that almost felt too personal.
08:14She was called vacant and wooden, they said she didn't know how to perform on camera
08:18and that her line delivery was childish.
08:20Of course, the fact is that Coppola hadn't intended to cast Sofia, he hadn't even intended
08:25to make the film until he was made an offer he couldn't refuse.
08:28With only 20 months to go from a blank page to a premiere, Coppola drew the best possible
08:32cast and crew around him.
08:34No one could say no to The Godfather, and that included Winona Ryder, who was perfectly cast
08:38as Mary Corleone.
08:40That is, until, having filmed three movies back to back, she pulled out due to nervous
08:44exhaustion a day before she was due to begin filming.
08:47Coppola didn't have anyone else except Sofia he could bring in to play Mary at such short
08:51notice, and he couldn't just rework the schedule, he was already pushed for time.
08:56That in turn led to one of the most notorious miscast roles in Hollywood history, and it's
09:00one that he's regretted for about 30 years.
09:03From the late 80s to the mid-90s, Harrison Ford was the biggest leading man in Hollywood.
09:13If a script had a male lead role over 45 years old, then they took Ford first, because if
09:18he said yes, their project would get an immediate greenlight.
09:21Of course, even a workaholic can't be in everything, and Ford has never been a workaholic, so he
09:26almost always said no.
09:27And that's exactly what happened with the role of Dr Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg's
09:31Jurassic Park.
09:32A role which was not so much written for him as modelled on the character that had made him
09:36a star.
09:37No, not so much Han Solo, though there could be elements of that, I guess.
09:41We're talking about Indiana Jones.
09:43If you check out the painted concept art that Spielberg had knocked up at the pre-production
09:47stage, the guy running away from the T-Rex with the two kids is the spitting image of Ford's
09:51rugged archaeologist.
09:52And that is not a coincidence.
09:54In retrospect, you can kind of see why he turned it down.
09:57Grant is a rough-and-ready prehistory geek, a paleontologist with a gung-ho attitude and
10:02a cool hat who spends half the movie running away from elaborate special effects.
10:06It's basically everything he spent half of the 80s doing, and you can't blame a man
10:10for not getting too excited at the prospect of doing it all over again.
10:142.
10:15Bloodsport in The Suicide Squad
10:18During interviews in the run-up to The Suicide Squad's release, both James Gunn and star
10:22Idris Elba were keen to dismiss rumours that he'd been hired to replace Will Smith's
10:26Deadshot.
10:27Since it was a while before Elba's casting was attached to a specific character, the
10:31initial assumption was that the part of the hitman Floyd Lawton had been recast.
10:35Warner Bros were very keen to publicise that this wasn't the case, no doubt to ensure
10:39that Smith, arguably the biggest star, remained on the radar to return to the role in a potential
10:44threequel.
10:45After a bunch of rumours about different characters being introduced, it turned out that Elba was
10:49playing Gunn's version of DC's Bloodsport, aka Robert Dubois.
10:52The thing is, Elba's Dubois is Smith's Lawton.
10:56They're both bad-tempered gunmen and reluctant team leaders with a sinister metallic full-face
11:00mask.
11:01And, like Deadshot, Bloodsport even has a daughter who is, like Deadshot, the only good thing in
11:05his life, an addition to his character that only exists in Gunn's movie.
11:09Then, let's look at the timeline. Smith announced that he wouldn't be returning at the end of
11:13February 2019. Gunn's shooting schedule was set in stone, and Smith was already booked.
11:18Elba was announced to be in talks to join the cast a week later, and by this time Gunn
11:22had already written several drafts of a script that Warner Bros were reportedly high on.
11:27It seems obvious that those drafts included Deadshot. Peter Safran has all but admitted
11:31this in an interview last July. What it looks like from the outside is that they were going
11:34to recast Smith with Elba, but then panicked over losing their relationship with Smith,
11:39forcing Gunn to think on the fly and bring in a new character. However, given the huge
11:43similarities between the characters, it was less of a last-minute rewrite and more of
11:47a find-and-replace job.
11:501. Everyone in Blowdry
11:53Blowdry is a case study in the horrors of studio micromanagement. There may be no other
11:58film in history where the entire cast were all clearly intended to be practically anyone
12:03other than who they were. It's fair to say that 20 years ago, Oscar-winning screenwriter
12:07Simon Beaufort didn't have the Hollywood clout that he probably enjoys today. Beaufort's
12:11first feature was The Full Monty, an unexpectedly massive comedy about laid-off Sheffield steelworkers
12:17who form a male stripper troupe. The film featured a cast of virtual unknowns, most of whom came
12:22from the north of England. But when he attempted to duplicate the trick with his script for
12:25Never Better, this time being about rival hairstylists in Yorkshire, Beaufort found his film placed
12:30with Miramax and the infamous Harvey Weinstein. Suddenly, there were lists of Hollywood-famous
12:35actors flying around, mostly over his head. Even the director had little control over who
12:40was cast, which is how a movie supposedly about the authentic lives of working-class northerners
12:45ended up with pretty much no cast members from the north. I mean, there was Londoners, there
12:49was Australians, there was Americans, and all of them absolutely murdered the Yorkshire accent.
12:54The result was, to put it mildly, horrible. Unable to fix it, Beaufort bowed out to make room
12:59for another writer, but since the whole point was to play up the connection with The Full
13:03Monty, he wasn't even allowed to remove his name from the film. Instead, in a towering
13:07moment of English passive-aggression, he asked for his credit to read, based on the screenplay
13:12Never Better by Simon Beaufort. Probably would have been even better if he had managed to
13:16get them to preface it with, very loosely.
13:19And on that note, we've reached the end of this list of 10 movie roles obviously designed
13:24for other actors. If you've got any more in mind then let us know in the comments down
13:27below. And remember to check out WhatCulture.com for more lists and articles like this every
13:31single day. As always, I've been Amy from WhatCulture, and I'll catch you next time!
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