- Ryan O’Neal,, Love Story, 1970.
- Robert Redford, The Way We Were, 1972. When Robert Redford played hard to get, Beatty, Ken Howard, even Ryan O’Neal, were on producer Rah Stark’s new short list. But Barbra Streisand had a crush on Redford, said director Sydney Pollack. She made it clear: Redford – or no film. “I thought it was a good script, but he was, I felt, one-dimensional,” explained Redford about his role. He was no happier after the first preview. “I think we’d both have preferred a more political, Dalton Trumbo-type script, but finally Sydney came down on the side of the love story. We trusted his instincts, and he was right.”
- Donald Sutherland, Ordinary People, 1979. Novelist Judith Guest’s anatomy of a family more in pain than love reminded Robert Redford of “the missed signals” of his own upbringing, – it became his directing debut. Tim Hutton, who won an Oscar as the troubled son in his debut, reported his parents had once been set as Anthony Franciosa and Ann-Margret! Ruling himself out – “too predictable”- Robert Redford had also considered Bruce Dern or Ken Howard, wed to, maybe, Lee Remick – who became Mary Tyler Moore.
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“There’s a story about how a young actor met Ken on the Fox lot in 1983 and told him what a fan he was of The White Shadow. Ken asked that actor what he did and the young man said, ‘Well, someday I hope to be lucky enough to work with you.’ Then he told Ken he had an audition all the way across town at Paramount, but he wasn’t going to make it because all he had was a bike. So Ken put his bike in the trunk of his car and dropped him off at Paramount. Then Ken just waved goodbye and said good luck, ‘I hope we do get that chance to work together.’ I didn’t get that audition, But I did get the chance to work with him years later. It was an honor. Today his obituary read that he was six-foot-six, but he was so much taller than that.” – George Clooney.
Birth year: 1944Death year: 2016Other name: Casting Calls: 3