- Ashley Aston Moore, Now and Then, 1994. Dunst was asked to join an eventful summer of 1970. However, she refused to gain weight for Chrissy. “It wasn’t worth ruining my figure.”
- Mena Suvari, American Beauty, 1998. She was “not ready” to portray a sexual predator, appearing half naked with Kevin Spacey.Within four yearsshe was boasting to New Woman magazine about having sex with lover Jake Gyllenhaal “on the beach, in the bathroom, in a car and…nearly in a hotel hallway, but it was too risky.”
- Anna Paquin, X-Men quartet, 1999-2013. “Mutation: it is the key to our evolution.” RLC and the Canadian Katharine Isabelle were the main contenders for Marie D’Ancanto/Rogue. Followed by Kirsten Dunst, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Christina Ricci. Natalie Portman rejected the rôle… but changed her mind about comix as Jane Foster in the Marvelverse Thor and Avengers movies. (RLC and Paquin were co-starred in She’s All That, 1999).
- Kate Hudson, Almost Famous, 2000. Looking for his Penny Lane groupie in his semi-autobiographical look back to his Rolling Stone reporter daze, auteur Cameron Crowe saw 48 of LA’s bright young things… Christina Applegate, Selma Blair, Lara Flynn Boyle, Neve Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Claire Danes, Cameron Diaz, Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jenna Elfman, Jennie Garth, Maggie Gyllenhal, Alyson Hannigan, Angie Harmon, Anne Heche, Katherine Heigl, Jordan Ladd, Kimberly McCullough ((busier as a TV director these days, High School Musical: The Musical – The Series, etc), Rose McGowan, Bridget Moynahan, Brittany Murphy, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laura Prepon, Lindsay Price, Christina Ricci, Rebecca Romijn, Winona Ryder, Chloë Sevigny, Marley Shelton Tori Spelling, Mena Suvari, Uma Thurman, Liv Tyler, Lark Voorhies. Plus the English Saffron Burrows, Anna Friel, Thandiwe Newton and Rachel Weisz, Madrid’s Penélope Cruz, the French Charlotte Gainsbourg, Canada’s Natasha Henstridge, Ukrainian Milla Jovovich, Scottish Kelly Macdonald, Israeli Natalie Portman, German Franka Potente, Australian Peta Wilson and Welsh Catherine Zeta-Jones. And the winner, Canada’s Sarah Polley, simply split. (Silly girl). Crowe then chose Kate (previously booked for Anita) because “she seemed more like a free spirit.” But, but, but… Chloë was the freest spirit in all Hollywood. As she proved two years later in The Brown Bunny… in a way the others would never have dared.
- Jordana Brewster, The Fast and The Furious, 2000. Vin Diesel ‘s sister, Mia Toretto, was written for Eliza Dushku but she passed. Dunst auditioned, as did Jessica Biel, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Bijou Phillips and Natalie Portman. Brewster didn’t make another film for three years and eventually re-franchised in chapters 4, 5, 6 and was filming #7 when co-star Paul Walker as killed in an off-duty car crash on November 30, 2013. At age 40. He was not driving.
- Angelina Jolie, Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, 2000. For the girls, Lara Croft is their James Bond. Well, more of a sexy Indiana Jones. And 22 hopefuls wanted to bringther sassy, video-game adventurer to life. Demi More was, perhaps, the most keen, but who was simply disregarded. Christina Applegate, Drew Barrymore, Victoria Beckham, Sandra Bullock, Cameron Diaz, Nicole Eggert, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Kate Hudson, Elizabeth Hurley, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anna Nicole Smith (a joke, surely), Catherine Zeta-Jones were considered. Fairuza Balk, Natalie Cassidy, Kirsten Dunst and Milla Jovovich auditioned while Denise Richards, Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman and Liv Tyler simply refused. And Lara’s guy (who fled the sequel) was Daniel Craig – complete with a Walther PPK pistol that he would use again as 007 in Casino Royale, 2005
- Anne Hathaway, The Princess Diaries, 2001. Among 22 youngstars (Jessica Albato Reese Witherspoon) rejecting the awkward San Francisco teenager being groomed (by Julie Andrews!) to inherit the Genovia throne – after director Garry Marshall’s (shock) first choiceof Juliette Lewis quit.
- Nicole Kidman, Moulin Rouge, 2001. “If I started worrying about who else was in for a film part, I’d never sleep at night. And is my choice so great? I’ve made some pretty bad movies over the years.” Director Baz Luhrmann explained about his needs: “They didn’t have to be big singers, but they had to be able to move you emotionally. Basically, Ewan [McGregor] and Nicole were the best for the job. That’s the bottom line of it.”
- Lauren German, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2003. Seen about playing Erin in the (as always) unnecessary – indeed, “contemptible, vile, ugly and brutal,” said Chicago critic Roger Ebert – re-make of the 1974 chiller. The star, Dennis Hopper said: “I was lousy – it’s a lousy film. But I had fun doing it.”
- Jennifer Connelly, A Brilliant Mind, 2001. If the choice of the right actor to portray the schizophrenic Noble Prize-winning mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr was vital, selecting his screen wife was even more so – hence an Oscar for Connelly and not for Russell Crowe. The other candidates included Julie Bowen, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Geena Davis, Kirsten Dunst, Portia De Rossi, Claire Forlani, Rachel Griffiths, Teri Hatcher, Famke Janssen, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Catherine McCormack, Mary McCormick, Mia Maestro, Rhona Mitra, Julia Ormond, Amanda Peet, Christina Ricci, Meg Ryan, Chloe Sevigny, Alicia Silverstone, Mira Sorvino, Hilary Swank, Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman, Rachel Weisz. PS Emily Watson was rejected as “too British” – while Salma Hayek was seen because Alicia Nash came from El; Salvador… which must have meant the others were too American, Australian, South African, etc. Director Ron Howard seemed to forget they were all actresses. Odd that, as he used to be one.
- Bryce Dallas Howard, The Village, 2003. Dunst split to do her Jean Arthur riff in Elizabethtown and – said director Ron Howard’s daughter -M Night Shyamalan “was looking for a new Haley Joel Osment.” He found her playing As You Like It on Broadway. Bryce, The Eternal First Reserve, made a whole career of replacing others… Kirsten here; Nicole Kidman, Manderlay, 2005; Lindsay Lohan, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, 2008; Clare Danes, Terminator Salvation, 2009; and Rachelle Lefevre in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, 2009.
-
Scarlett Johansson, Girl With A Pearl Earring, 2003. UK director Mike Newell chose Kate Hudson. Second director Peter Webberchose Dunst. And she chose to leave Ralph Fiennes at the easel for Spider Man 2. Finally, in a quite magnificent film, Scarlett expunged all traces of being American as she posed for Colin Firth’s Vermeeer.
-
Anna Vareschi, The Brown Bunny, 2003.Before going with local amateurs,actor-director Vincent Gallo thought of a Hollywood profile for the women he seduced and discarded in the road movie. (Not the fellatrice). His first choice for gas station attendant Violet “didn’t work out because she had a lunatic, nasty woman as an agent who harassed me on the day of the shoot – before Kirsten was getting on the plane. Suddenly, we werere-negotiating... and she said ‘Kirsten is like a young Julia Roberts, everybody wantssomething from her’ and on and on and on. I said: Well, good, don’t ever call me again!” Gallo told Dunst how displeased he was and “she became another person, a cold, curt, nasty little witch of a brat on the phone.”
-
Kristen Bell, Pulse,2005. A shadow of its former self – Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2000 Japanase horror, Kairo – the (as usual) unecessary re-hash was aimed at Dunst, who cried off due to Spider-Man 2. To say nothing of having read the pathetic script. Wes Craven was among the adapters. You’d never know it.And so, another break for the Michigan star of Veronica Marsand… Reefer Madness.She joined the return of Ghostface in Craven’s Scream 4 in 2010.
-
Melonie Diaz, Be Kind Rewind, 2008. Ms Spidey was in talks with director Michel Gondry and suddenly fled from Alma.
- Isla Fisher, Confessions of a Shopaholic, 2008. For once, the prerequisite outsider won as Disney chose an unknown (cheaper, sure, but hilarious) after seeing everyone from the Jessicas (Alba and Biel) to Lindsay Lohan (!) and Reese Witherspoon, who rightly felt Rebecca Bloomwood was too close to her Elle Woods creation in the two Legally Blonde films. Also in the mix: Dunst, Emily Blunt, Anne Hathaway, Katie Holmes, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried.
- Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 2011. Auteur-producer John Hughes snapped up rights to Stephen Chbosky’s novel for a darker comedy with Dunst, Patrick Fugit and Shia LaBeauf as Sam, Patrick and Charlie. While working on the script, Hughes suddenly died in 2009. Finally, Chbosky gave us “the rare pleasure of an author directing his own book, and doing it well,” said Chicago critic Roger Ebert – with Watson, Ezra Miller and Logan Lerman. “No one who loves the book will complain about the movie, and especially not about its near-ideal casting.” Including Watson as her first American. Why? Because Chbosky told her: “Not only is this going to be one of the most important parts you play, you’re also going to have the summer of your life and meet some of your best friends.” All true, she reported.
- Jennifer Lawrence, The Silver Linings Playbook, 2012. “If you really want to go back and do an archeological dig,” laughed director David O Russell, “I wrote it for Vince Vaughn. And Zooey Deschanel.” Then, Jennifer did a reading on Skype with “an enormous amount of confidence that was beyond her years…toughness and a sweetness and charisma… I hadn’t seen anything like that.” JLaw won the Oscar. Her rivals – Dunst, Elizabeth Banks, Rachel McAdams, Rooney Mara, Andrea Riseborough, Olivia Wilde – had been well and truly Skyped!
- Blake Lively, Hick, 2011. Just like Colin Farrell, clashing schedules meant Dunst had to quit. She passed Glenda fromAndrea Portes’ Vegas novel (and script) to the lively Blake.
- Romolo Garai, The Crimson Petal and the White, TV, 2011. When Michel Faber’s novel was due as a movie, Dunst was #1 choice for the successful 1870s London prostitute called Sugar. Director of Photography for the BBC four-parter was a certain Lol Crawley. Great name. Great work. (Repeated in Mandela: A Long Walk To Freedom, 2012).
- Nicole Kidman, The Upside, 2017. Bizarre to find such A-Listers as Kidman, Chastain and Michelle Wiilliams in contention for such a third wheel role and in, alas, a typically hollow-wood re-hash of a gigantic French hit, Untouchables, 2011. Kidman had previously beaten Chastain to the Grace Kelly biopic, Grace of Monaco, in 2013.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 21