- Andrew Garfield, The Amazing Spider-Man, 2010.
- Dan Byrd, Easy A, 2010. The actor behind Percy Jackson, Hollywood’s wannabe Harry Potter, auditioned for Emma Stone’s gay chum in a modern take on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter – only now the A doesn’t mean adulteress but pretending to be an easy lay.
- Douglas Booth, Romeo and Juliet, Italy-Switzerland-UK-US, 2013. Forty-six years after the Franco Zeffirelli version another Italian’s take – from TV director Carlo Carlei. “So what fresh meat does this 2013 rehash bring to the table?” asked Austin Chronicle critic Kimberley Jones “Startlingly little, unless you favour the flavour of staggering insipidness,” was her reply. “Where,” she concluded, were the full-bodied “violent delights” of Shakespeare’s play. Booth won Romeo from fellow Brits Sam Claflin, Benjamin Gur and Hollywood’s Josh Hutcherson and Logan Lerman.. in the adaptationj by Julian Fellowes, Oscared for Gosford Park and Emmied for creating all those Crawleys in Downton Abbey.
- Tye Sheridan, X-Men: Apocalypse, 2015. Hey, one Logan is enough in the Marvelvderse…! Lerman, Jamie Blackley, Luke Bracey, Timothée Chalamet, Taron Egerton, Ben Hardy, Josh Hutcherson, Dylan O’ Brien, Jesse Plemons and Charlie Rowe – they all tested to succeed James Marsden’s Scott Summers/Cyclopsfrom the opening quartet, 1999-2013.
- Tom Holland, Captain America: Civil War, 2015. Lerman never made the cut for the new andyoung Spider-Man in what amounted to The Avengers: Part 2.5 and, of course, a teaser for future Spideyverse tales. Despite vigorous interest from Brits Daniel Radcliffe to Freddie Highmore, the reported ten finalists to succeed Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker were: Timothée Chalamet, Canadian Liam James, Logan Lerman, judah Lewis, Matt Lintz, Dylan O’Brien, Charlie Plummer, Chandler Riggs, Charlie Rowe, Nat Wolff. Plus Londoner Asa Butterfield, way too tall in his tests with a shorter Robert Downey Jr (but OK to co-star with Chalamet in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, 2015). During a 2013, Holland said what he wanted an action movie with humour. “Maybe Spider-Man, in ten years’ time. The reboot of the reboot, if they do that.” They did. He did – becoming the youngest Spidey on June 23, 2015. The hero was 15, the actor was 19. His predecessors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, were 25 and 27 back in their day.
- Ansel Elgort, Baby Driver, 2016. When UK director Edgar Wright was sacked by Marvel from his Hollywood debut, Ant-Man, in 2014, he moved on to his long gestating project. Elgort, suddenly in everything from the good (Divergent, The Fault In Our Stars), the bad (the newCarrie) and the ugly (Men, Women & Children), was almost a shoo-in for getaway driver Elgort – and not Lerman or Star Wars’ John Boyega. They missed one helluva ride. “A remorselessly entertaining, impeccably assembled action-musical in which cars and people defy the laws of physics and common sense,” said The Village Voice. In short, what Marvel hadn’t wanted. An Edgar Wright movie!!
- Alden Ehrenreich, Solo: A Star Wars Story, 2017.
- Max Irons, The Wife, 2017. The first announced 2025 casting included Logan as the son of new Nobel Prize-winniung Jonathan Pryce and the titular Glenn Close. The prize is for literature – certainly not for peace! As she wrote hubby’s books…
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 8