Yeti4623

Any actors who turned down a role, because they didn't think they were talented enough to pull it off?

ddrknghtrtns

How about actors who turned down roles because of arrogance or indifference? One has to wonder if George Raft regrets turning down High Sierra. Similar to Bogart, Eastwood's career was built off of Charles Bronson turning down The Man With No Name trilogy and John Wayne turning down Dirty Harry.

Speaking of Wayne, he also turned down Blazing Saddles. So they went with Cleavon Little instead.;-}

TheMovieman

I heard Angelina Jolie turned down Bullock's role in Gravity...

dugan

Actors who turned down great roles...

duff beer

Quickly you do "what if this what if that" route but then learn it doesn't really matter , everything work out anyway , it makes sense in time. So i was bummed Liam Neeson didn't get Lincoln, but in retrospect Lincoln kind of sucked aside from DDL himself, so instead we got to see Neeson actually spearheading the action genre spiffily. While Lincoln will go down as the biggest example of Spielberg's stale direction.

creekdipper

Don't know if it qualifies as a 'great role' but Charlie Hunnam backing out of 50 Shades might qualify. Of course, that's assuming that he wasn't forced out due to complaints. EW reported that Hunnam said that he didn't have time to 'adequately prepare'; evidently Sons doesn't allow enough belt whuppins to the club skanks.

(Later on, Hunnam said that he wanted to spend more time with family)

dugan's reposting of an earlier related thread makes for good reading; didn't have time to go through it all, but there's a bunch of examples listed. Always fun to see the 'what-might-have-beens, epecially with iconic roles.

TomOpus

Only the actor would know. I doubt they would publicly say they lacked talent for any role.

Double_Oh_7

I'm pretty sure George Raft doesn't regret anything anymore, being dead and all.

Double_Oh_7

Hmmm, I heard she was ready to do it, but got dropped for Sandra Bullock. Guess it depends on whose spin you believe.

Groucho

People are ignoring the second half of the question. The closest example I can think of is Mike Myers shutting down the Dieter movie because he didn't think the script (which he wrote) was up to snuff.

Considering that "The Love Guru" got made, that script must have been pretty bad.

MScottM

I think this begs the question, did the actor that played the role make it great or was the role itself "great" and any actor could have filled it. When I look at great roles, my belief is that the actor makes the role great not that it is an inherently great role.

Case in point, I am not a great fan of Tom Arnold but I can't picture a better actor in the role he played in True Lies. In my opinion, he helped make that a great movie and the role he played in it was great because he played it. Just my opinion.

On the flip side, I like Willem Dafoe as an actor. He has done some great things but having read most of Tom Clancy's books, Dafoe was a disappointment to me as John Clark in Clear And Present Danger. I think he was miscast and as a result, what should have been a great role turned out to be adequate at best.

d2cheer

I really wish Jessica Alba didn't turn down the role in Ass Bangers 13...

Drexl

I don't think you'll find too many examples of what you want. Most actors, I assume, wouldn't want to admit they didn't think they were good enough for a role, and many actually enjoy challenging themselves.

Although this does remind me of an article I read in EW a while back about the attempts to get a new Fletch movie off the ground. It said that several prominent actors have turned down the role, in the fear that they could not hope to match Chevy Chase's "iconic" performance. I knew it had kind of a following, but I had no idea the film (or especially Chase's performance) was held in such high regard. It's not as if it would even be a true remake, but rather an adaptation of the books.

Here's the article if anyone is interested: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20342679,00.html

Solid Snake

Is cuz of Dafoe or is it the way the cript plays? I've never seen the film so I'm just wondering.

digidoh

Another similar thread:

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/...-mistakes.html

MScottM

I pictured the character very differently. He did a good job but just wasn't "right" for the role in my opinion.