- Arnold Schwarzennegger, The Terminator, 1983. In all, 52 actresses were considered, seen, or tested for the robot assassin’s target, Sarah Connor -but a mereeight guys for the killer from the future, itself. Prochnow, Michael Douglas, Mel Gibson, Randy Quaid, Tom Selleck,… It was when Orion boss Mike Medavoy decided on OJ Simpson as the Terminator (!) and Arnie as Reese, that CameronrealisedSchwarzi was the perfect, coolest Terminator in town. Ironically, Prochnow played Schwarzi’s life inSee Arnold Run, TV, 2005.
- Marlon Brando, The Island Of Dr Moreau, 1995. “Moreau, as originally conceived, was actually nothing like Brando,” said the opriginal director Richard Stanley. “I’d originally talked to Jürgen Prochnow. I wanted Moreau to be a little bit of a New Ager… long hair and beard… a composite of Timothy Leary and John Lilly, the dolphin communication expert.” Did somebody say dolphins? Brando told the next director, John Frankenheimer, about his ideas for Moreau. “He should be wearing a hat all the time and at the end of the movie, takes off his hat, and he’s actually a dolphin.” “So then,” said New Line Cinema’s co-chief, Robert Shaye, “I knew we were in serious, serious bad shape.” Ironically, the HG Wells novel later inspired his friend Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – the matrix of Apocalypse Now. Both films involved writer Michael Herr and Brando doing his best/worst to ruin them. Wells said Conrad’s Moreau was a copy of his Kurtz. No, said Conrad, his model was the world famous Welsh journalist-explorer (“Dr Livingstone, I presume”), Sir Henry Morton Stanley… great-grandfather of the first director!
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 2