What actors passed up huge roles multiple times?

will smith also almost passed up the pursuit of happyness

https://preview.redd.it/9qmpz9v4dofh1.png?width=1477&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe2902c90e3443af3281926f3d5e24613a1e4612

Interesting to have courted Will Smith then cast DiCaprio as his obvious self-insert avatar. I wonder if he would’ve had Smith do the same lol

Ok in Will Smith’s defense, he did not pass on “100M heist movie from the director of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight” he passed on “80 page treatment for horror movie about “dream stealers” from guy who directed Memento.” The treatment was being shopped around in 2002-3 and NOBODY got it, so Nolan gave up and did The Prestige and Batman movies, while tinkering with his idea. Nolan himself admits the concept was really vague and not saleable
at the time. In 2002 Smith was coming off Ali’s Oscar win and was interested in some sort of sci fi or horror project, so he got shown this, and went on to do I, Robot instead.

it’s kinda giving…

https://i.redd.it/l3cdefnffofh1.gif

Sacrifices had to be made, I still be listening to that Wild Wild West song

Will has a team that takes his scripts and makes them more “Will Smith” which isn’t uncommon, so Inception might have been somewhat different starring him.

Al Pacino turned down Han Solo, passed on Die Hard, Pretty Women, and Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now.

Burt Reynolds also turned down Han Solo, Michael Corleone, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and believe it or not, James Bond which he was offered despite being American.


Michelle Pfeiffer, who was Jonathan Demme’s first choice for Clarice Starling (they worked together on *Married to the Mob*), turned down the lead in *The Silence of the Lambs* because the story icked her out. Meg Ryan turned down the part for similar reasons

On the other hand, Jodie Foster was *desperate* to play the part. She tried to buy the film rights to the book herself, but was beaten to it. She even tracked down various people involved in the shoot and basically stalked them, begging for the part. Demme, though, did not want her because he didn’t care for her performance in *The Accused* (she’d won a Best Actress Oscar for it, but Demme felt she got the Massachusetts accent wrong).

With other bankable actresses turning down the role, Demme was eventually forced to give Foster a chance. They wound up working surprisingly well together. And the rest is movie history.

Although, maybe we should’ve taken Foster’s eagerness for the part as a big of a red flag: she’d wind up being a huge champion and defender of Mel Gibson, and had no problems working with Roman Polanski saying that his rape of a child was “not [her] business”.

And speaking of actors turning down big parts, Jodie Foster turned down the part of… Princess Leia in the first *Star Wars* film, because she didn’t want to pull out of the film *Candleshoe*.

he should have asked jayden, Mr Realize Real Eyes would have deciphered it.

Sometimes his snap judgment decision making skills, when it comes to his career, are lacking  

TIL Inception considered a good movie

We joke, but history will forgive and be kind to Will Smith for all the giant rolls he passed up.

Didn’t Sean Connery also turn down the matrix bc he didnt “get it” and vowed to take any future role even if he didnt “get it”