- Lisa Barbuscia, Highlander IV – Endgame (aka: Highlander: World Without End), 1999. After the so-so series, Christophe(r) Lambert came back for an Immortal movie. Julier Landau and Lucy Lawless (far too busy with her own series, the lively, lovely Xena: Warrior Princess, 1995-2001) were up for Duncan MacLeod/Adrian Paul’s squeeze, Kate. Or, then again, Faith.
- Famke Janssen, X-Men quartet, 1999-2013. “Mutants are not the ones mankind should fear.” Lucy Lawless and Peta Wilson could not shake the shackles of their series. Bello and Helen Hunt passed. Bryan Singer (the final director after such notables as, Kathryn Bigelow, Danny Boyle, Tim Batman Burton, Richard SupermanDonner, Irvin Stars Wars V Kershner, John Die Hard McTiernan and Robert El Mariachi Rodriguez came and went) decided to go with Janssen as Jean Grey, aka – eventually – Phoenix.
- Elizabeth Hawthorne, Cleopatra 2525, TV, 2000-2001. Producer Robert G Tapert’s wifeonly had time to be Voice in the pilot. Hawthorne took over for the series – and indeed, re-Voiced the pilot.
- Renée Zellweger, Bridget Jones’s Diary, 2000. Lucy and Naomi Watts were thetwo down-under queens ridiculously considered for the plump 30-something London office worker. Even if they dared to put on 20 pounds likeZellweger.
- Cate Blanchett, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, 2001-2003.
- Kate Vernon, Battlestar Galactica, TV, 2005-2007. New Zealand’s Xena the Warrior Princess felt she was wrong for the nympho (15 episodes), so the producers wrote the Cylon skinjob D’Anna Biers for herin some 13 episodes.
- 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 to Whedon’s favourite, Cobie Smulders. 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: 7