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© Tony Crawley 2021
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CHAMPIONS' LEAGUE

Brando and Nicholson

There are more than 8,000 actors detailed on this site. Some have bypassed a single film. Others, many more. Then, there are the champs… Since launching CCC in 2008, Marlon Brando always topped this list. And year by year, discovery by discovery, Jack Nicholson, has been catching up. Well, he’s now about as close as he’s going to get: 163 to Marlon’s 164. (Exciting, huh?). They will probably stay that way unless I have a new revelation from a Hollywood book or interview about Jack having been up for Dracula, Wolverine and all the Three Stooges!
The icons were Mulholland Drive neighbours and tried to work together in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Deliverance (Brando agreed, even said “I’ll take whatever you pay Jack” - but that added up half the budget! ). They chose The Missouri Breaks (above) and the less said about that the better. Both were up for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Name of the Rose, Coppola’s Great Gatsby and Fellini wanted either one as his 1976 Casanova.

1. Brando - missed 164 movies
2. Nicholson - 163
3. Cary Grant -147
4. Paul Newman - 147
5. Tom Cruise - 110

Highest Brit Sir Sean at 108.
Highest lady is Bette Davis, 90 items; Jodie Foster, 80; Michelle Pfeiffer, 72; Meryl Streep, 70; Nicole Kidman, 69; Julie Christie and Liz Taylor, 67; Nicole Kidman and are level at 67; Katharine Hepburn, 66; Debra Winger, 65.
Newer Brigade: Brad, 107; Johnny, 99; Julia, 64; Leo, 64; Jim Carrey, 62; Madonna, 61; Jennifer Aniston, 27; Jennifer Lawrence, 23.

(You'll find the full list at Champions in the Main Menu)

NO TIME FOR BOND

Bondo

Daniel Craig finally attends the No Time To Die premiere in 2033 - after picking up his pension at the Post Office.

"This thing is just bigger than all of us," Daniel Craig told Jimmy Fallon about Covid. "We want to release the movie at the same time all around the world and this isn't the right time." So, seeya in October… like after my summer gig with ZZ Top.

He said title

Shall I wear my glasses? Because I figure I'm playing you. - Michael Caine to Woody Allen at start of Hannah and Her Sisters.

Acting by itself can be pretty monotonous after a while. I wanted to do something. Also I just wanted to have a job when I was 60+. - George Clooney on directing.

If Warren had stayed a virgin, he’d be known as the best director in the world. - Dustin Hoffman on Warren Beatty.

When I go, just skin me and put me on top of Trigger. - Roy Rogers to wife Dale Evans.

Werner Herzog was a mere lad when first saw Klaus Kinski, who lived in the same building. "I knew at that moment that it was my destiny to make films and direct Kinski in them." Now he’s known for acting in The Mandalorian. With Baby Yoda.

This is how silly the movie was, OJ Simpson played a priest. - Re-writer Tom Mankiewicz on The Cassandra Crossing (Covid on a train). Tom’s tile: The Towering Germ.

Where I live people still read books that can't be made into films. - Stellan Skarsgård on Sweden.

What attracted you to the part, Mr Mitchum? “The director asked me to play it.” - Robert Mitchum

Stars losing colours >>>Karen Allen, Rebecca De Mornay, Cybill Shepherd: Blue Velvet. Hazel Court, Merle Oberon, Ann Todd: The Red Shoes. Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons: A Clockwork Orange. Emilio Estevez: Red Dawn… and his brother Charlie Sheen: Pretty in Pink Uma Thurman: Fried Green Tomatoes. John Travolta: The Blue Lagoon, The Green Mile<<<

TWOMB RAIDER

Move over, WandaVision, Lara Croft is coming back… And she’s in good company. While waiting for 007 to get cracking, MGM had chosen Misha Green - the Lovecraft Country creator - to writer-direct Alicia Vikander’s second outing as the female Indiana Jones (with touches of Tarzan). Lara was born as a Sony PlayStation video game back in 1996. If she was between 25/30 then, that makes her 50 or more today … except our best heroes never age. (They have No Time To Die, either. (Well, someone must have it!). Misha also worked on FX's Sons of Anarchy and is auteuring a Netflix actioner, The Mother. The Swedish Alicia (Mrs Michael Fassbender) took over from Angelina Jolie in 2017, beating 20 other candidates, including two Underworlders (Kate Beckinsale, Rhona Mitra), three Twilighters (Ashley Greene, Nikki Reed, Kristen Stewart), 007’s Gemma Arterton, Harry Potter’s Emma Watson, Marvel’s Wanda, Elizabeth Olsen, Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley, Transformers’ Megan Fox, TRON’s Olivia Wilde, X-Men’s Jennifer Lawrence. Oh, it’s a crowded world out there...

A MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

“We had certain ideas. And for that, we were gassed, beaten, arrested, and put on trial.” Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman - and fans.

As many as 14 years ago, Steven Spielberg told the supreme scenarist Aaron Sorkin he wanted to make a film about the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and the insane trial of seven of the Vietnam war protestors. “Count me in!” said Sorkin, who had no idea what Spielberg was talking about and quickly called his father: “Dad, know anything about a crazy conspiracy trial in '68?” He found out and started his script in 2007 - then a writers’ strike delayed everything. Meanwhile, Spielberg cast Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman. Will Smith had no time to be Bobby Seale. And Heath Ledger ODed the day before his meeting to discuss playing Tom Hayden (he who later wed Jane Fonda). Other directors, Peter Berg, Paul Greengrass, Gary Ross, Ben Stiller (!!!) came and went. So many years shot by that Spielberg was able to see Sorkin’s 2017 directing debut, Molly’s Game, and select him to helm his scenario. Paramount lost interest (no superheroes!), so The Trial of the Chicago 7 became the first Netflix acquisition to live up to its hype, even though it was far from being 100% factual.


BEST SELLERS "What role?" "All of them!" said Stanley Kubrick. Sellers never finished this fourth ...	SWEET MARILYN She lost Baby Doll, Can-Can, Freud, Harlow. So what! She was sublime in Some Like It Hot.	LITTLE SHIRLEY After lavish tests of Shirley Temple for 1949's Little Women, MGM chose Janet Leigh as Meg.	TOM JONESHow Indiana Jones was supposed to look. With Steven Spielberg’s first choice. Tom Selleck.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

The Magnifient Seven - Steve McQueen and friends

Scene stealer. Steve McQueen is the only guy looking down -
hence your eyes are drawn to him. Clever bugger!

Hollywood’s earlier Seven made Steve McQueen a superstar. At first, it was aimed at the old hats. Clark Gable, Glenn Ford, Stewart Granger, even Spencer Tracy! One “kid” got a call: George Peppard. But McQueen knew that Vin was The Big Break. Legend says that to be free of his TV gig, Wanted Dead Or Alive, he deliberately smashed a car and shot a Vin test while was “out sick.” Impressed by his series, Yul Brynner insisted on signing him. Big mistake! McQueen not only stole scenes from him but the entire film. He apologised in a phone call when dying of cancer in 1980. “You coulda had me kicked off the movie when I rattled you, but you let me stay and that picture made me, so thanks." Brynner said: "I am the king and you are the rebel prince: every bit as royal… and dangerous to cross." Five year later, Brynner also died of cancer. (Wonder who he called). Peppard got there in the end. His Battle Beyond the Stars was Magnificent Seven in Space - with his co-star, Robert Vaughn, recycling much of his 20-year-old dialogue from McQueen’s movie.

TOUGH OLD LIFE

EVEN TOUGHER

I think this is my only casting anecdote where an actor - poor Hume Cronyn in The Valley of Decision, 1944 - was replaced for being too short alongside Gregory Peck.

When James Mason was chosen over David Niven for A Touch of Larceny, in 1959, a poor UK actor called John Dearth was dropped… for looking too much like Mason!

MASTER CASTER

First Mike Fenton, now Lynn Stalmaster has died - the only casting director to win an Oscar. In a 60-year career, the ex-actor worked on more than 400 films: Being There, Coming Home, The Great Escape, The Thomas Crown Affair - and casting a hundred roles in The Right Stuff! He watched movies, TV shows, Broadway plays, checking his notes when the right role beckoned. You name ‘em, he found ‘em. Jeff Bridges, Richard Dreyfuss, Dustin Hoffman for The Graduate, Christopher Reeve for Superman, even the banjo kid jn Deliverance: Billy Redden. OK, he couldn’t get John Travolta into Jack Nicholson’s Last Detail, so he got him Welcome Back, Kotter, which led to Grease. "He saw some kind of light in our eyes or something,” said Bruce Dern. ”He dared us to take parts that nobody else would take. John Frankenheimer told me while making Black Sunday: 'If you've got Lynn Stalmaster to cast your movie, you have a damn good chance of having a good movie.'”

Lost biopix >>>Ursula Andress: The Happy Hooker. Elvis: as Hank Williams, Your Cheatin’ Heart. Cary Grant: The Eddy Duchin Story. Tom Hardy: Rocketman. Kate Hudson: Grace of Monaco. Grace Kelly: singer Lilian Roth, I’ll Cry Tomorrow. Denzel Washington: Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom. Robin Williams: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers<<<

Photo ©redits:

All The President's Men montage: Reg Oliver,1976; The Trial of the Chicago 7, Nilo Tavernise, DreamWorks Pictures, 2019; The Magnificent Seven, United Artists, 1960; Missouri Breaks, United Artists, 1976; TC sketch: Graham Marsh, 1976; Kim Novak: Columbia Pictures, 1958; Tomb Raider: MGM, 2017; Annabelle Wallis in The Silencing: Saban Films, 2019; Raquel Welch, 20th Century Fox, 1965. Marilyn Monroe: 20th Century Fox, 1962; Peter Sellers: Hawk Films/Columbia Pictures, 1963; Shirley Temple: Selznick International Pictures, 1946; Tom Selleck: Belisarius Productions/Glenn A Larson Productions/Universal TV,1988; Lynn Stalmaster: AMPAS, 2017. Plus enormous thanks to The Man: Daniel Bouteiller.

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WELCOME to a unique directory of what you never saw on-screen. The films the stars did not make. The movies that never were. The most definitive collation of casting stories ... Check up on all the films - of yesterday, today and tomorrow - that your favourite stars never made... A cast of thousands - 8,063 actors - to click on... More than 40 years in the making!! And 2,749,022 words of spirited text. The ultimate in movie trivia ... Better! Exactly the kind of history that Hollywood deserves. Back to front. Upside-down. Inside out. Full of flashbacks, close-ups, tracking shots (and, alas some badly edited sequences - sorry about that!) forming a fascinating, new and often bizarre flip-side perspective on your treasured movies and stars.

This is the film that bred this site ... after Robert Redford told me he'd planned a little black-white version - with Robert De Niro, and Michael Moriarty as Woodstein.

BOND LADY

Cubby Broccoli decided on Raquel Welch for Thunderball's Domino. “Next thing, the studio called on a Saturday,” she told me, when filming One Million Years BC, at Elstree studios in 1965. “Now in Hollywood, nobody calls anybody from the studio on a Saturday. I mean, the head of the studio just doesn’t go near a phone, any phone, on a Saturday. But he did. ‘We gotta picture for you.’ ‘Well, I don’t wanna do it. I wanna do Thunderball.’ And he said: ‘Well, that’s tough, baby, because we have a deal going with those boys and we have cooled the whole issue.’ As it turned out, they used four girls. I looked like three of them, we would have cancelled each other out. But in Fantastic Voyage, I’m the only girl!”. Eon released her - “which may or may not have done her a favour,” pondered Broccoli.

NOW THAT'S A MASK

Actually, it’s Kim Novak as a Greenwich Village witch with her familiar - a scene-stealing Siamese cat called Pyewacket. - in 1958’s Bell, Book and Candle.

STAR PECK

Among the favourite books of a TV writer called Gene Roddenberry was CS Forrester’s collection about his Royal Navy hero, Captain Horatio Hornblower. He loved the film, too - with Gregory Peck. In fact, it gave him the idea for Hornblower in Space… better known over 55 years as Star Trek. Like most movie stars back in the day, Peck wasn’t keen on TV. His grandson is quite different. Ethan Peck has scored 45 acting gigs in the last 26 years. We’ve seen him in Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, as the young George Clooney in The Midnight Sky - why, he’s even made a flick with Mariah Carey. (Why, indeed!). Today he goes where Grandpa had not gone before. Ethan, 35 in May, is the new Spock in everything from Star Trek: Discovery and Short Treks to the upcoming Strange New Worlds. Or, to put it another way, Hornblower Jnr in Space.

She said title

In Hollywood, women have only three ages: babe, district attorney and Driving Miss Daisy. - Goldie Hawn in First Wives Club, 1995

So many surprises. That was Jack. And Jack can’t be explained. - Diane Keaton on Nicholson.

Annabelle Wallis

Me and Cillian, we call Peaky Blinders the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, I don’t know if the road is done just yet. We’ll have to wait. - Annabelle Wallis.

I wanted to be Warren [Beatty]. Who in their right mind wouldn’t? And that became our central problem. I wanted to be Warren Beatty, not love him. - Diane Keaton.

How was that in relation to being the only Asian woman on set? Well, that I’m totally used to. Being the sole Asian person is a very familiar place for me. - Sandra Oh

“You’ll never be a star because you can’t boil an egg” – said one Andy Warhol star, Candy Darling, to another, Holly Woodlawn.
“When I become a star, I’ll have my cook boil my eggs” – said one Andy Warhol star, Holly Woodlawn, to another, Candy Darling.

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