Stars who turned down legendary roles

It's pretty wild to think how differently some of these movies would have been, had they accepted.


Which Stars Turned Down Legendary Roles?

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^ Or Ghost.

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Major career decisions are always tough. But to look back on some of these films you have to wonder WTF were they thinking when they turned it down?

They either can't judge a good script, the script was massively rewritten, the director hadn't signed on yet (and subsequently changed a lot of it), or they had a prior commitment.

Still some major forehead-slappers here.

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Some of those are hard to picture. Like Johnny Depp in Ferris Bueller. It makes me wonder if he would have had the same career today doing all the Tim Burton movies or what.

I know this isn't exactly the same thing, but I heard that Shirley Temple was was considered for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but couldn't because of studio loyalty or something. Like they wouldn't let her work for another studio. Even though Judy Garland is fantastic, I have always wondered what it would have been like with Shirley Temple.

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Other examples

Albert Finney - Lawrence Of Arabia
Frank Sinatra - Dirty Harry
Robert Redford -Dirty Harry
" " - Superman

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It wasn't studio loyalty . Foxy would not loan her out.

Brando was to star in Lawrence but got bogged down with Mutiny

John Wayne also turned down Patton

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Updated On: 6/17/13 at 10:18 PM

I mentioned these on the Liza thread on the Main Board, but Sreisand turned down both Klute (Oscar-winner for Jane Fonda) and Cabaret (Oscar-winner for Liza).

Streisand adds that she rejected Cabaret before Fosse had signed on, and that would have made the difference for her. They would have tailored the role of Sally Bowles to fit her, just like they did for Liza.

I can only imagine how an American Jewish singer in Berlin just as the Nazis are coming into power would have felt. That would have added a whole different dimension to the story.

Still, I'm glad we have Liza's brilliant performance and Streisand turned it down.

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Adding a couple more famous oldies ...

Norma Shearer turned down Scarlett O'Hara (Oscar-winner for Vivien Leigh) and Mrs. Miniver (Oscar-winner for Greer Garson).

She lost her drive for making movies after her husband (Irving Thalberg) died. She left the studio and basically quit acting not long after that.

But when she turned down Scarlett, it started a nationwide, highly publicized search to cast the part.

As for Shirley Temple, she was never really an option to play Dorothy. She was the #1 box office star in the world back then, and Fox never would have loaned her out. They toyed with the idea briefly, and Fox actually asked them for both Clark Gable AND Jean Harlow for movies, and they MIGHT consider loaning Temple to make "Oz." But Jean Harlow's sudden death put an end to any serious negotiations. And Mervyn LeRoy and Arthur Freed both maintain that the screen rights to "Wizard of Oz" were bought from Samuel Goldwyn with the idea of it being a star vehicle for Judy Garland. It was only when Louis B. Mayer started to realize how expensive the movie would be that they got cold feet for a week or so and tried to see if there was any real chance to get Temple from Fox. The answer was no.

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A few more I know about ...

Mary Pickford and Montgomery Clift turned down Sunset Boulevard.

W.C. Fields and Ed Wynn turned down the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz.

Gale Sondergaard turned down the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

Cary Grant turned down both Harold Hill in The Music Man AND Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

Frank Sinatra turned down Carousel and The Pajama Game.

EDIT: Goth, if you're looking for some sort of "legal, written documentation" you won't find it. But I saw Streisand, on camera, talk about it just a few years ago. She kind of winced when she said it, too. But if this really was before Fosse even signed on, this is early in the process when the studio was putting together their package deal for the film. Streisand was a movie star by that point, Liza was not (although she had an Oscar nomination for a small-budget film already). And while I'm sure Kander & Ebb's opinions were important, they never would have called the shots on casting the film. I'm sure they were pushing for Liza, though, no question. And when Fosse signed on, he wanted her, too. But if the studio says, "We're making Cabaret with Barbra Streisand," then that's what would have happened. Fosse would have come on board to direct with his leading lady already part of the "deal."

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Updated On: 6/16/13 at 10:45 PM

"I'm sure Kander & Ebb's opinions were important"

Do you think they would have pulled Maybe This Time from the movie?

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I worked with a cousin of That Streisand Woman and she advised me never, NEVER, to believe what Barbra says to the press. She fabricates almost everything about her past and the roles she could have or should have played.

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Shelly Winters turned down Lainie Kazans role in Beaches.

There are a couple of examples listed where I'm really glad the casting went another direction. I think casting a "name" in a role can backfire regardless of how talented or capable the actor/actress is. A "name" always carries a certain amount of notoriety baggage that either gets effectively erased, or utilized well in an audience's mind.

Bette Midler in Misery? Midler was too famous to be completely effective in that role, in spite of her talent. Part of the scarey aspect of Annie Wilkes centers on how ordinary she is. It's scarey to watch how unexpectedly evil that "ordinary" person becomes.

Kathy Bates was more of a tabula raza. It was much easier to immediately accept her as the ordinary, anonymous Annie. I didn't need to take the extra step of erasing how famously recognized Midler already was in my mind. For me, that made Annie scarier.

And Bette Davis in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I think this scene would have stepped too much over the line into comedy in spite of Davis' possibilities for performing the rest of the role: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWoAOohbr5M.

Taylor and Burton were perfect. Both were strong actors who could be believable in those roles without their notoriety, but in this case, the notoriety baggage of their personal lives helped (to my mind), particularly in Taylor's case. In a similar way, I could enjoy the casting of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise as Maggie and Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof if they both were stronger actors - but they're not.