- Harvey Keitel, Bad Timing, 1980. “I loved him in American Friend. but he turned us down – twice,” Brit director Nicolas Roeg told me. “He was looking for more of a star role.” Sissy Spacek fell out, too. Roeg married her replacement, Theresa Russell, in 1982.
- Guy Marchand, Loulou, France, 1980. For yet another wannabe-Cassavetes slice of the obnoxious realisateur Maurice Pialat’s life, the auteur had trouble enough casting himself, aka Loulou. Ditto for André, the husband whose wife Loulou makes off with. Ganz was considered alongside (weak) singer-actor Alain Souchon and ex-Truffaut assistant director Jean-Fancois Stevenin.
- Liam Neeson, Schindler’s List, 1993. Steven Spielberg spent ten years growing up before making the Holocaust film and not just because he couldn’t find his Oskar Schindler, the Nazi businessman who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews. The list also included Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Swedish Stellan Skarsgård, Australian Jack Thompson… and his 2011 Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis. After four previous nominations, this is the film that finally won Spielberg his first Oscar on March 21, 1994. A decade later, Ganz – The Tuetonic Anthony Hopkins – was a remarkable Hitler in Der Untergang/The Downfall, 2004.
- Mathieu Almaric, Quantum of Solace, 2008.
Birth year: 1941Death year: 2019Other name: Casting Calls: 4