- Olivier Martinez, La femme de chambre de Titanic, France, 1997. Long after Gérard Depardieu quit and Spanish film-maker Bigas Luna picked it up – which news made Vincent and his femme, Monica Belluccci, flee.
- Benno Fürmann, The Order, 2002. The Frenchman quit after a few days and (surprise, surprise!!) was suddenly free to replace Val Kilmer in, indeed, as Blueberry. An enormous (and pretentious) flop.
- Eddie Izzard, Blueberry: L’expérience secrète, France, 2003. First booked for Prosit, Cassel was given the title role when auteur Jan Kounen could not land Williem Dafoe, Benicio Del-Toro or Val Kilmer as Mike Blueberry. They were well out of it. Apart from the hero’s name, Kounen’s pretentious Western had absolutely nothing to do with the French comicbook it was based on. Indeed, the estate of the co-creator and original writer of the Blueberry comic books, Jean-Michel Charlier, aka Gif, aka Moebius, found the changes (especially the shamanism) so appalling that it requested Charlier’s name to be removed from the credits. Kounen has made more docus and TV episodes than features (just three more) in his 2020 total of 25 screen credits. Izzard is a a UK comic who also does his stand-up in French.
- Benoit Magimel, Rivieres pourpes II, France, 2003. As the first director Mathieu Kassovitz quit, Vincent went on to newer things like his caemembert Western… (Well, it was French. And it stank like caemembert!).
- Albert Dupontel, Le Convoyeur, France, 2003. Sorry pal, Cassel told Parios auteur Nicolas Boukhrief, but he’d just played a guy who was “thematically too close” to this one.
- Mads Mikkelsen, Casino Royale, 2006.
- Vin Diesel, Babylon AD, 2006. French actor-director Mathieu Kassovitz and Hollywood never gelled. He hated what happened to his LA debut, Gothika. 2003. Much the same followed on this one – where he was not allowed to use his good friend and star of his La Haine, Vincent Cassel, and was forced to accept Vin Diesel – “a completely idiot actor.” And then, after five years of planning, his final cut…was cut. He was later in a documentary about the whole mess, named after how Fox called him. Fucking Kassovitz.
- Jean-Paul Rouve, La Môme (US: La vie en rose), France-UK-Czech Republic, 2007. The role? Edith Piaf’s circus performer father Louis Gassion who dumped her with her grandmother – a bordello madame.. Cassel was soon making another César-winning biopic – of the gangster Mesrine.
- Tomer Sisley, Largo Winch, France, 2008. Anything Jason Bourne can do… Philippe Francq’s French comic-book hero won a fresh lease of life after a dismal TV series, 2001, due to the sheer energy of Sisley, a (charismatic) clone of Mattieu Kassovitz – an actor turned stand-up comic turned actor again for a much acclaimed ninth movie.
- Gad Emelah, Le capital, France, 2012. Change of banker for Costa-Gravras’ first film in four years…
- Mathieiu Almaric, The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2013. Dujardin, Almaric and Vincent Cassel… Director Wes Anderson had to decide between three French actors for Serge X, butler to Tilda Swinton’s dowager, Madame D, dead at 84.
- Julian McMahon, Fantastic Four, 2014. There were 2016 rumours about Cassel making yet another (wasted) attempt at making the four fantastic. “But I had already refused the rôle several years ago – like all the other proposiitons of superhero fim villains. The comic book artist, the Brazilian Mike Deodato Jr, chose to give my facc to his Docor Doom character. I don’t really don’t know why but I find that rather cool.”
- Karl Glusman, Love, France-Belgium, 2014. Or Dangerwhen first suggested in 2001 when the mind-blowing Argentine-born Paris provocauteur Gaspard Noé won an OK from the French cinema’s in-couple, Belucci and Vincent Cassel, to have real sex on-screen in his second film. However, once Noé finished his script (he said Love was a mere seven pages), the in-couple was out – preferring not to display their sexual intimacy. Not to mention, the proposed threeway with a transexual! They made up for this by going full-frontal in Noé‘s ultra tough replacement, Irreversible, 2001. Thirteen years later, Karl Glusman was the tumescent Murphy (maiden name of Noé‘s mother) in Love. Noé never actually directed the hard-core sex sequences. “Once you put the people in the right positions it’s OK. They know how to do it.” His next film was called Climax. Of course, it was.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 14