Katie Holmes

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, TV, 1997-2003.  Too young…!  Anyway, Katie, or sweet Joey Potter of Dawson’s Creekat the time, preferred to finish high school. Thqwo othert  girls lost Sunnyvale’s saviour: Selma Blair and Natasha Lyonne (soon wearing Orange is the New Black).Five more won other roles: Elizabeth Anne Allen (Amy), Julie Benz (Darla), Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia), Julia Lee (Anne) and 16-year-old Mercedes McNab  (Harmony) as SMG ruled for all 145 episodes as Buffy… original name of Yoda in Star Wars!
  2. Julia Stiles, Wicked, 1998.     Said the posters: “Evil Never Looked So Good.”
  3. Mena Suvari, American Beauty, 1998.     Welcome to Hollywood…!  For his first LA movie – for a producer called Spielberg!  – UK stage director Sam Mendes saw all the current young Hollywood babes for Kevin Spacey’s Lolita-esque infatuation (she was even called, not Haze but Hayes). And he was  turned down by Holmes, Kirsten Dunst, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan,  Kate Hudson, Brittany Murphy, Leelee Soboeski – and Tiffani Thiessen lost her audition. That’s not Mena on the poster, though; the hand and stomach belong to actress-model Chloe Hunter.
  4. Brittany Murphy, Girl, Interrupted, 1999.  One Flew into the Cuckoo’s nest… stems from Susanna Kaysen’s memoir. She committed herself to a psychiatric institution and was kept there for two years, although she was quite sane. Chicago critic Roger Ebert said Winona Ryder) (also exec producer) and  the support Oscar-winning Angelina Jolie – as Susanna and the sociopath Lisa – were the reasons to see the film, although “their work here deserves a movie with more reason for existing.” Most other patients were teenage girls, played by rising young Hollywood actresses in their 20s – Angela Bettie and Jillian Armenante even played 22 at age 31. Why? Because, said Rose McGowan, “It’s the only decent thing out there that doesn’t involve taking your clothes off.”
  5. Penelope Cruz, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, 2001.    Penelopewas followed into Tom’s bed by Katie in 2005… And people still insist there is no such thing as coincidence.
  6. Anne Hathaway, The Princess Diaries, 2001.   Among 22 youngstars (Jessica Alba to Reese Witherspoon) rejecting the awkward San Francisco teenager being groomed (by Julie Andrews!) to inherit the Genovia throne – after director Garry Marshall’s (rather surprising) first choiceof Juliette Lewis quit. Katie won her own prince…
  7. Zooey Deschanel, Big Trouble, 2001.     Katie signed for the disgruntled teen, Jenny Herk, from the Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry’s first novel. Barry is humorous. The film was not. 
  8. Shannyn Sossamon, 40 Days and 40 Nights, 2001.    At first it was Ashton Kutcher  – and Katie as the poor girl meeting (and liking)  a guy who’s just given up sex for Lent.  Bad timing! (They became Sossamon and Josh Hartnett).
  9. Renée Zellweger, Chicago, 2001.
  10. Jennifer Garner, Daredevil, 2002.    “How did I become Action Girl?” asked Garner.  Because 22 other girls were not punching their weight in TV’s Alias every week. They were Jessica Alba, Jolene Blalock, Neve Campbell, Penelope Cruz, Portia de Rossi, Eliza Dushku, Claire Forlani, Angie Harmon, Salma Hayek, Katie Holmes, Milla Jovovich, Nicole Kidman, Lucy Liu, Mia Maestro, Rhona Mitra, Bridget Moynahan, Natalie Portman, Kyra Sedgwick, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon.  Plus the Norwegian ballet dancer Natassia Malthe, who became Typhoid in Garner’s 2004 Elektra spin-off.   Garner reportedly KOed the blind hero, Ben Affleck, in one scene – he still  married her three years later!

  11. Lauren German, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2003.      She was seen about playing Erinin the re-make of the 1974 chiller. Totally unnecessary, indeed, “contemptible, vile, ugly and brutal,”saidChicago critic Roger Ebert.
  12. Diane Kruger,  Troy, 2003.      Katie tested or The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships. But she wasn’t Mrs Tom Cruise yet…
  13. Emmy Rossum, The Phantom of the Opera, 2003.   Now she was…  too old!    (At 18!).  Director Joel Schumacher also saw  Charlotte  Church, 17; Anne Hathaway, 21; Keira Knightley, 20; Kate Winslet, 28… …  and 34-year-old Catherine  Zeta-Jones!
  14. Elisha Cuthbert, The Girl Next Door, 2004.     Holmes, sweet Holmes was the surprise idea for the retired porn star next door. “I just don’t think her heart was in it,” said director Luke Greenfield. Cuthbert, Keifer Sutherland’s fellow Canadian daughter in 24, was “so hungry. She had all these pictures of different looks that Danielle would have. She had such maturity. She gave it her all.” Touted as the next Pretty Woman, the film flopped and ruined Cuthbert’s standing. Getting too cosey with Paris Hilton after their House of Wax and her lesbian in NBC’s One Big Happy, were no lifebelts.
  15. Sienna Miller, Factory Girl, 2005.  A s the British girl was in – and then out – of the biopic of Andy Warhol star,  Edie Sedgwick, Holmes was in… Until her religious convictions  – more likely those of husband Tom Cruise – prevented her playing the drug addicted Andy Warhol “superstar” Edie Sedgwick.  Furthermore, Holmes  proved  pregnant with daughter Suri. 
  16. Keri Russell, Mission: Impossible III, 2005.  When Tom Cruise postponed everything  to make Spielberg’s War of the Worlds,  Scarlett jumped into two successive Woody Allen films, among other movies. The role of Lindsay Farris was then aimed at Jessica Alba, Elisha Cuthbert, Lindsay Lohan… and Holmes who won Cruise instead. (They wed in 2006). Finally,  Russell was selected. Easily. She headlined the new M:I auteur JJ Abram’s TV series, Felicity, 1998-2002. 
  17. Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Dark Knight, 2007.
  18. 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 Katie… 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: Holmes, Emily Blunt, Kirsten Dunst, Anne Hathaway, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried.
  19. Marion Cotillard, Nine, 2008.
  20. Lindsay Lohan, The Other Side, 2009.     Mrs  Cruise had to withdraw due to her Broadway play, All My Sons, so director David Michaels took a chance on the tabloids’ favouriteparty animal. “Lindsay’s very aware of people’s perceptions of her. She’s really committed to doing what she has to in order to change that.”

  21. Miley Cyrus, Sex And The City 2, 2009.    Katie playing Katie became Miley playing Miley. Well, that got the younger bums on seats.
  22. Isla Fisher, Confessions of a Shopaholic, 2009.     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.
  23. Adrianne Palicki. Wonder Woman, TV, 2011.     The DC comicbook heroine had not been seen on screens since Lynda Carter ended her four year reign on ABC in 1979. Time then, said Warner, for a new movie. DC’s testosterone duo, Batman and Superman, had cleaned up, now it up to the beautiful superhuman Amazon warrior Princess Diana of Themysacira, her Lasso of Truth, her indestructible bracelets and (honest) her invisible plane. With who…? Across a decade of plans by producers as diverse as Joel Silver (so wrong) and Joss Whedon (so right), 24 beauties were in the frame: from Madonna in 2003 to Katie in 2007. Then, the film morphed into an updated TV series by David E Kelley – that, too, was dead after the rushed pilot. Palicki was the sole actress considered for TV – she was previously seen by George Miller for WW in his aborted Justice League, in 2008. 

 

 

 

 

 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  23