- Jennifer Beals, Flashdance, 1983. “I met with [UK director] Adrian Lyne on a couple of things because he and I shot a commercial together.” The “nation-wide search“ (of LA…!!) came down to 20 possibilities for flashprancer Alex Owens. Andie, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bo Derek, Janice Dickinson, Bridget Fonda, Jennifer Grey (yet she won Dirty Dancing), Melanie Griffith, Daryl Hannah, Mariel Hemingway, Helen Hunt (hated the script), Jennifer Jason Leigh, Heather Locklear, Kathy Najimy, Tatum O’Neal, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kyra Sedgwick, Sharon Stone and Debra Winger. Pix of the final three – Beals, Demi Moore and Leslie Wing – were shown to the studio’s construction guys by Paramount suits asking: “Which one do you most wanna fuck?” Dissolve.
- Kim Basinger, 9 1/2 Weeks, 1986. UK director Adrian Lyne saw ‘em all! Jacqueline Bisset, Teri Garr, Demi Moore, Tatum O’Neal, Isabella Rossellini, Dominique Sanda, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver… And MacDowell who thought the script was borderline sleaze. Oh, it was way over the border!
- Elisabeth Shue, Adventures in Babysitting, 1986. Back in the 60s, teenage babysitter Chris Parker was for Jane Fonda. By the 80s, her logical heir, her niece Bridget, was just not intersted. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was signed, followed by Jodie Foster, then it became a battle between Kathleen Turner (the fourth #1 choice), MacDowell, Justine Bateman, Valerie Bertinelli, Judy Davis, Jodie Foster, Melanie Griffith, Kelly McGillis (spurned by director Christopher Columbus), Tatum O’Neal (who simply fled), Michelle Pfeiffer (preferring The Witches of Eastwick.. until she made it!), Brooke Shields and Sharon Stone.
- Anne Archer, Fatal Attraction, 1986.
- Jodie Foster, The Accused, 1988.
An awful thing to say. Except it is true. Jodie Foster would never have won her (first) Oscar for this trenchant drama – if actress Kelly McGillis had not been raped in 1982… At first, the role of the rape victim Sarah Tobias was written for MacDowell. She passed. The Paramount suits then saw 34 other young actresses for the (real life) victim. Or, for their own rape bait fantasies – including 16-year-old Alyssa Milano! Foster was refused a test because she was “not sexy enough”! And, anyway, the studio had decided upon McGillis, a high flyer in Paramount’s Witness and Top Gun. And, naturally, she refused point-blank! She knew what it was to be brutally raped and Kelly had no wish to revisit the horror and agony of her own assault six years earlier. The suits were annoyed. They needed her. She was hot at the box-office, their box-office. They had made her a star!! Eventually, McGillis agreed to play Sarah’s defence attorney – on condition that unsexy Jodie played Sarah! The suits caved, tested Foster and the rest is Oscar history… So is the huge list of talent also seen for Sarah. Starting with the Fatal Attraction also-rans: Rosanna Arquette, Ellen Barkin, Kim Basinger, Jennifer Beals, Jennifer Grey, Melanie Griffith, Linda Hamilton, Darryl Hannah, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Diane Keaton, Demi Moore, Kelly Preston, Meg Ryan, Jane Seymour, Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, Debra Winger. And moving on to the younger Melissa Sue Anderson (trying to break her Little House on the Prairie image), Justine Bateman, Valerie Bertinelli, Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Connelly, Joan Cusack, Judy Davis, Kristin Davis, Bridget Fonda, Annabeth Gish, Mariel Hemingway, Virginia Madsen, Brigitte Nielsen, Tatum O’Neal, Molly Ringwald, Mia Sara, Ally Sheedy, Brooke Shields, Uma Thurman. Oh, and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, said the suits, was “too nice.” Rape victims shouldn’t be nice? Oh, Hollywood! - Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs, 1989.
- Demi Moore, Ghost, 1990. She refused several roles with sexual overtones because they gave her first husband, Paul Qualley, “the willies,”
- Elizabeth Pena, Jacob’s Ladder, 1990. For Tim Robbins’ lover, Jezzie, UK director Adrian Lyne saw Lopez. Plus MacDowell, Demi Moore and Julia Roberts – also shortlisted two years later for his Indecent Proposal. He decided on what Hollywood viewed as a major casting risk – making the leading lady an Hispanic. And Pena had him from the first audition. Chicago critic Roger Ebert praised her as highly for “creating a believable and even sympathetic woman while at the same time suggesting dimensions that the hero can only guess at.”
- Geena Davis, Thelma & Louise, 1990.
- Kelly Lynch, Curly Sue, 1990. “That was another movie that started out as one movie and ended up being another movie entirely,” reported Kelly. “But a great experience… like a throwback to one of those Depression-era movies that you’d seen Jean Harlow in.” Kirstie Alley, Jamie Lee Curtis, Geena Davis, Laura Dern, Linda Hamilton (off shooting Terminator 2), Goldie Hawn, Andie MacDowell, Olivia Newton-John, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver were also suggested for the cynical Chicago lawyer missed up with a Paper Moon II act: Jim Belushi and young Alisan Porter. Critic Roger Ebert fell for John Hughes’ final film – “could have been written by Damon Runyon, illustrated by Norman Rockwell and filmed by Frank Capra.”
- Irene Jacob, Podwójne życie Weroniki/ La double vie de Véronique,France-Poland-Norway, 1991. First idea of “the Polish Bergman,” Krzysztof Kieslowski was Andie, partnered by Italian actor-director Nanni Moretti.
- Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct, 1991.
- Madeleine Stowe, The Last the Mohicans, 1991. She as the first McChoice for the Colonel’s daughter, Cora Munro, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis as author James Fenimore Cooper’s 1757 frontier scout. Neither one staved off my boredom; I fell asleep.
- Demi Moore, Indecent Proposal, 1993. Worried by nudity? Not any more! “I just walk in the kitchen naked all the time. We’re… The Naked Family.” She had told her son at nine: ‘If this is not normal, let me know. I don’t want you to grow up and say: My mother walked around naked all the time. He said: Let’s worry about it when I’m ten.”Anyway… didn’t matter which lady accepted the role – MacDowell, Irene Jacob, Sophia Marceau, Julia Roberts – the film had a fatal flaw. A zillionaire offers Woody Harrelson for a night with his wife. Mr Money Bags was Robert Redford. ’Nuff said?
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 14