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Demi Moore, St Elmo’s Fire, 1984.
One studio chief called the life-after-college pals “the most loathsome humans” he’d ever read. Nobody liked the script, the song, most casting ideas and the title – one Columbia suit spent 35 memo pages on why it should be Sparks or The Real World and not after an obscure meteorological phenomenon! “Everyone wanted that role,” recalled director Joel Schumacher about Julianna Van Patten, aka Jules – Joan Cusack, Jodie Foster, Tatum O’Neal, Lea Thompson. (He felt Madonna would not be keen on an ensemble. After all, the cast was soon called The Brat Pack). Demi got tired waiting to see auteur John Hughes about Weird Science in his office opposite Joel’s. “I happened to see her running down the hallway – That’s Jules!“ He got Kurlander to get her… “I remember running out of the building after her, saying something like ‘I-know-this-may-sound-weird-‘ pant, pant, pant, ‘but-we-are-making-a-movie-and-the-director-would-like-you’ – pant – ‘to-come-back-because-you’d-be-great-for-the-part…’ Whatever our interaction, Demi came back, and she was perfect for the free spirited, wild child Jules.“ Maybe too perfect. Joel had to tell her: go to rehab and get clean or he’d recast the part… with Jenny or Madonna. She got sober. Joel loved her. “She had to go through 35 different things in the movie. At that age? Pretty fucking amazing, right?” And Jenny played Rob Lowe’s long-suffering wife. -
Ally Sheedy, Blue City, 1985. The New Yorker star of Capital News, TV, was first cast as Annie – until the role was rewritten.
- Rae Dawn Chong, The Squeeze, 1986. Nicolas Cage’s lover was first due to be Jenny in what Chicago critic Roger Ebert called “a non-movie held together only by the intrinsic appeal of Michael Keaton and Rae Dawn Chong“
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 3