Celebs Who Turned Down Major Movie from Titanic, Fightclub and more

Can you imagine US movie star Gwyneth Paltrow in Titanic? or Brad Pitt in Almost Famous? Well it could of happened!
Many of the films we see today, cast wise if very different to what the product/director first planned with some talent just being unavailable for shooting.

Some of the most iconic roles in film and TV could have looked very different had they gone to the original casting choices.

FIGHTCLUB:

While Pitt nailed his audition — and had Crowe “rolling on the floor” in laughter — it just wasn’t the perfect fit for that moment. Crowe even admitted that he “wept” when the Fight Club star pulled out of the project.
“But I think in the back of my brain, I knew that he had never fully fallen in love with the character,” Crowe said. “He had fallen in love with the idea of the character. But, maybe there just wasn’t enough on the page.

TITANIC

Paltrow admitted that she could have starred in 1997’s box office hit, Titanic.

I look back at the choices I’ve made and think, ‘Why the hell did I say yes to that and no to that?’” she added. “And you know, you look at the big picture and think, ‘There’s a universal lesson here. What good is it to hold onto roles?’”

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

The studio offered the role to Rachel McAdams three times. The team were etermined to have her, and she was determined not to do it,” director David Frankel explained to Entertainment Weekly in June 2021. After back-to-back hits with The Notebook and Mean Girls, the actress wanted to focus on less mainstream films, clearing the way for Anne Hathaway to play the part in the 2006 film.

INDIANA JONES

Tom Selleck: Indiana Jones in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’.

Harrison Ford took the lead role in the franchise as the archeologist, but it could’ve been Tom Selleck. Karen Allen, who played Marion Ravenwood opposite Ford as Indiana Jones, revealed the Friends alum’s TV career forced him to turn down the gig. “Tom Selleck had been cast, and then it turned out Magnum P.I. got picked up,”. “They wouldn’t let him out of his contract, and so he was heartbroken. I only know that way after the fact because I sat with him many years later and he told me how heartbroken he was.”
Allen also revealed that Sam Elliot, Jeff Bridges, Tim Matheson and John Shea auditioned for Steven Spielberg’s 1981 hit.

FORREST GUMP

It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the role that won Tom Hanks a Best Actor Oscar (his second) at the 1995 Academy Awards, but Forrest Gump was almost played by John Travolta.

“If I didn’t do something Tom Hanks did, then I did something else that was equally interesting or fun,” he told MTV. “Or if I didn’t do something Richard Gere did, I did something equally well. But I feel good about some I gave up because other careers were created.”

The same year Forrest Gump came out, Travolta appeared in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in a role that reinvigorated his career.

BLACK WIDOW

Played by: Scarlett Johansson
Missed out: Emily Blunt

The British actress was the first choice to play the Marvel superhero, but the role went to American star Scarlett Johansson. When asked if she regretted turning down the part Johansson will have played in nine films when Black Widow comes out next year, Blunt insists she doesn’t.

X-MEN

Viggo Mortensen: Wolverine in the ‘X-Men’ Franchise.

During a conversation on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast in February 2021, Mortensen recalled how his son, Henry, had a hand in his decision to give up the role of superhero Wolverine before Hugh Jackman ultimately secured the gig. “The thing that bothered me at the time was just the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over. I was nervous about that,” Mortensen recalled of early meetings with director Bryan Singer. “And also there were some things — I mean, they straightened most of them out, but I did take Henry to the meeting I had with the director as my sort of good luck charm and guide. In the back of my mind, I was thinking he could learn something, too, because I did let Henry read the script and he goes, ‘This is wrong. That’s not how it is.'”