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You're never too famous to be given the chop.
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00:00No matter how flawlessly the pre-production and shooting of a movie goes, the filmmakers never
00:05really know how it's going to turn out until they sit down in that editing suite and start
00:09piecing their footage together. And it's here where any previously unseen problems will start
00:14to rear their heads. Very rarely, this can mean that an entire subplot or character doesn't land
00:20the way it was intended, which can lead to an actor's work being left on the cutting room floor.
00:24So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, and here are 10 times actors were edited out of
00:31movies.
00:3210. Sienna Miller – Black Mass
00:34After appearing in Oscar Hopeful's Foxcatcher and American Sniper in 2014, Sienna Miller was
00:41set to star in another potential awards candidate the following year. Black Mass charted the crime
00:47career of famous gangster Whitey Bulger, and while the biopic did try and stick closely to
00:52Bulger's real-life story where possible, one major part of his life was omitted from the final film.
00:57Miller was cast as Bulger's girlfriend, the woman who helped him evade capture for over 15 years.
01:03She paid for his medications, ran errands for him, and in general was an important asset in his
01:08criminal activities. Miller had to perfect a Boston accent for the role, so she poured a lot of effort
01:13into her scenes. The director told The Boston Globe that while the actress was fantastic in the film,
01:18he chose to remove her because he felt that Bulger's later years, the scenes of which Miller featured
01:24heavily in, were less dramatic than the rest of the film. Ouch.
01:289. Kevin Spacey – All the Money in the World
01:31In light of these sexual misconduct allegations levelled against the actor in late 2017, Kevin
01:37Spacey's role in crime thriller All the Money in the World was literally edited into non-existence,
01:42and he was replaced by Christopher Plummer. This negativity meant that the film was essentially
01:46doomed. The buzz around it was now entirely negative, and its box office prospects looked
01:50shaky at best. Even its premiere at the AFI festival was cancelled. And yet, in an incredible
01:55feat of determination, organisation, and pure filmmaking skill, director Ridley Scott managed
02:00to reshoot all of Spacey's scenes and splice them back into the rest of the film literally weeks
02:05before it was set to launch. The best bit is, you can't really tell. I mean, there's one scene with
02:10a
02:10bit of obvious green screen, but for the most part, these reshoots are not noticeable.
02:148. Various Actors – Mr. and Mrs. Smith
02:18To say that the production of Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a bit of a mess is, to put it
02:22lightly,
02:23a massive understatement. Famously, the director, Doug Liman, was never fully sure how he wanted
02:29to conclude the film. One of his many, many, many plans was to have the titular couple defeat a pair
02:34of sinister villains before deciding against this and cutting the subplot out entirely. And this meant
02:39that a lot of great actors were also edited out of the film. Those two villains were initially
02:43played by Terence Stamp and Jacqueline Bisset, but when Liman decided that this version didn't work,
02:48he changed things up, reshooting their scenes with Keith David and Angela Bassett instead.
02:53He then decided that this didn't work either, scrapping the ending and opting to remove these
02:57characters from the film altogether. The worst thing about this was that Bassett and David weren't
03:02actually cast until the film had already wrapped principal photography. So to have your reshoots cut
03:09just totally emphasises how broken this film was.
03:12Number 7. Shailene Woodley, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
03:15If there's something that you can't fault The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for, it's the fact that the
03:20film definitely contained a lot of content, so much so that it's pretty ridiculous.
03:24It had countless subplots, like the mystery of Peter's parents, setting up the Sinister Six,
03:28Peter and Gwen's tricky romantic situation, Harry Osborn's disease, and Electro's rise to power.
03:33But it very nearly received one more, in the form of long-time Spidey love interest Mary
03:38Jane Watson. The role was played by Shailene Woodley, who at the time was quickly growing
03:42in stardom thanks to her roles in The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent. The actress worked on
03:47The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for several days, shooting a bunch of scenes that were nowhere to be found
03:51in the final cut. Director Mark Webb told the Los Angeles Times that removing Woodley from the film
03:56was an incredibly tough call to make, but that MJ's scenes just didn't work when combined with the
04:00existing romance between Peter and Gwen. And to be honest, you have to see this as the right call,
04:05because it most likely would have cheapened the relationship between Peter and Gwen if her
04:10death was suddenly glazed over with a blossoming new romance with MJ.
04:136. Jessica Chastain – The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
04:16Jessica Chastain probably isn't too bothered about this one, considering that The Death and Life of
04:21John F. Donovan currently holds a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie premiered at Toronto
04:27International Film Festival, with many critics labelling it as an incoherent mess. The fact that
04:33director Xavier Dolan delayed its release so that he could extensively rework the story was an indicator
04:38that things weren't shaping up, and it was during this process that Chastain's character was lost in
04:43the mix. On Instagram, Dolan said that he felt Chastain's part needed to be cut, explaining that
04:48her subplot just didn't mesh well with the rest of the story. Chastain wasn't the only one to be
04:53chopped either. While interviewing Bella Thorne, Vulture noted that her scenes had also been removed
04:57from the film.
04:585. Michael K. Williams – Solo – A Star Wars Story
05:02When solo directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired from the project in mid-2017, the film
05:08they were originally intending to make was forced to undergo a ton of significant changes. Included in
05:13these changes was the removal of a character played by The Wire's Michael K. Williams, who was
05:17ultimately axed because of scheduling conflicts. When Ron Howard boarded the movie as its new director,
05:23he still wanted to work with Williams, but major chunks of the film had to be reshot and reworked.
05:28So naturally, the length of the film's shooting schedule was increased significantly,
05:33which caused problems for Williams, who had other professional commitments to attend to. Namely,
05:37he was filming something else in South Africa at the time.
05:39So Howard was forced to remove Williams' role from the film, a character described as a
05:44sophisticated half-mountain lion, half-human. In the final cut, Paul Bettany plays a similar
05:48character, but not identical, who essentially had the same story function that Williams' character
05:53would have done.
05:544. Rick Mayall – Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
05:57It's borderline impossible to fit every element of a novel into its film adaptation, as the Harry
06:03Potter series found out the very hard way. Various parts of the books were cut from their movie
06:08versions, including Spew, Nearly Headless Nick's Death Day Party, and The Sphinx in the Maze.
06:14But one of the most notable omissions was Peeves the Poltergeist, who is nowhere to be seen in the
06:20entire franchise. Peeves is hardly an essential part of the Harry Potter story, but in the books,
06:27he gives Hogwarts Castle a bit more personality, and has many fun appearances throughout the series.
06:32Initially, he was supposed to appear throughout the movie series too,
06:35a recurring character played by comedian Rick Mayall. But his scenes in the first film were cut,
06:40because the filmmakers weren't happy with the look of the character. Mayall revealed that he
06:43did about three weeks of filming, but he kept getting sent off set because he was making everyone
06:47else laugh. He also sent his kids to see the film without telling them he wasn't actually in it,
06:52and they came up thinking he had played Hagrid… somehow.
06:553. Sterling K. Brown – Split
06:57After making several stinkers, like After Earth, The Last Airbender, and The Happening,
07:03M. Night Shyamalan made a big comeback with 2015's The Visit and then 2017's Split. Both films are
07:10impressively laser-focused, wasting not a second of screen time, and in the latter's case,
07:15this is because the director made the wise choice to remove a character from the final cut.
07:19Shyamalan has previously talked about how he once had a three-hour cut of Split,
07:24but obviously the studio would never let him release such a version, so major changes had to be made.
07:29The director then revealed that he decided to cut a character called Professor Shaw,
07:33in order to reduce that runtime and tighten up the story as a whole. The character's entire
07:38existence was a screenwriting error, according to the director. Wow, tell us how you really feel,
07:43Shyamalan! In the final cut, he wanted the story to focus more on Kevin Wendell Crumb,
07:47but since Shaw's scenes were mostly spent discussing psychology in general,
07:50and not Kevin's condition specifically, the character had to go.
07:542. Sarah Jessica Parker – Lovelace Lovelace stars Amanda Seyfried as Linda Lovelace,
08:00an adult film actress who starred in the 1972 film Deep Throat,
08:04a porn film with an actual plot and some character development. Unbelievable!
08:08Shortly after production began, Demi Moore was forced to drop out of the film due to health issues,
08:13which led to the filmmakers recruiting Sarah Jessica Parker as her replacement. As it turns out,
08:17they needn't have bothered going through all that trouble because the actress is nowhere to be seen in
08:21the end product. Moore and Parker were cast as feminist icon Gloria Steinem,
08:26a huge supporter of the anti-pornography movement. The script for Lovelace originally
08:30ended in 1984, at which time Linda had crossed paths with Steinem and came to support her anti-porn
08:36beliefs. However, during editing, the directors found that it was better to end the story in 1980
08:43before Linda became involved with Steinem. Thus, Parker's scenes weren't needed.
08:481. Mickey Rourke – The Thin Red Line Several actors were cut from Terrence Malick's
08:53The Thin Red Line, including Lucas Haas and Bill Pullman, as well as a voiceover track recorded
08:58by Billy Bob Thornton. However, Mickey Rourke is the only one who had a notable part in the film,
09:04one that was so good that the actor once called it his best work in a 2005 interview. It's not
09:09entirely
09:09clear why Rourke was cut, but the actor believes it was for personal reasons and not to serve the story,
09:14as he stated in that same interview, and I quote,
09:17"'There were political reasons why I was out of the movie. That really upset me. I'd gone
09:21through a really bad time, and Terry knew about it, so he incorporated it into the character. It
09:25really worked, but just because of the temperature of me and the industry, my scenes were cut.'"
09:29Malick is an experimental filmmaker who makes odd, thoughtful, often provocative movies.
09:35Whether this was a personal move against Rourke or not, it's often expected for Malick to discover
09:39what the film actually is during the edit, meaning that he ends up with something completely
09:43different to what he originally planned. He's cut major stars like Rachel Weisz, Jessica Chastain,
09:48Michael Sheen, and Amanda Peet from his movies too,
09:51so at least Rourke is in good company there on the cutting room floor.
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