- Leonardo DiCaprio, This Boy’s Life, 1993. The two close pals auditioned… Scots director Michael Caton-Jones preferred Leo to Tobey as… Toby. Instead, Tobey became Toby’s pal, Chuck. “Honestly, I owe my career to Growing Pains,” said Leo, “and specially to [the star] Alan Thicke. I joined the show [in 1992] for the final seasion and that year I also auditioned for This Boy’s Life. All the young actors in town were after that rôle. Me, my pal Tobey, everybody! And I got it! Can you imagine that? To be working with De Niro… at 15 years old? Except I had the TV contract – two episodes were left. And Alan Thicke said: ‘Let the kid go. Let him make the movie. It complicates the achedule, but we’ll work that out’.” “Wo,” said Brad Pitt. on hearing this story during their joint 2019 Cannes festival interview with Premiere magazine.
- Vince Vaughn, Psycho, 1997.
By 1990, Anthony Perkins had played Norman Bates four times. So why should anyone else play him? It’s been (over)done. It’s a classic. And by The Master. Why re-make Hitchcock? Ah, beg pardon, Gus Van Sant called it a reproduction. A bizarre (lazy!) notion of copying – the Psycho script, word for word, action for action, move for move, shock for shock (except the shocks were too famous to shock anymore). “Just shoot it in color and have, for instance, Jack Nicholson play the detective and Timothy Hutton play Norman Bates,” he suggested. “Universal wanted to rope me in, and I said:“Here’s the idea: don’t change anything! It’s never been done before. Isn’t that a great reason to try it?” Not really! What had he said about re-makes? “The essence is missing. You might as well make an original movie.” Right! “One guy in particular has an extreme Tony Perkins quality – Robert Sean Leonard,” Van Sant told Movieline’s Stephen Rebello. “So do… Henry Thomas and Jeremy Davies. [Indeed, Thomas was the teenage Bates in Psycho IV: The Beginning, 1989]. I think of MattDamon for everything I do… But he’s one of those under-30 guys who just didn’t get it. Leonardo would have been fantastic. I knew he knew that he could step into it. But I also knew he didn’t really want to do it. I seriously considered Joaquin Phoenix. He was interested… but busy. So, it was either wait or forge ahead and we forged ahead. Vince was not even in my imagination… But he had a really interesting quality I wasn’t expecting.”The UK’s fast-rising Christian Bale and DiCaprio pal, Tobey Maguire, were also short-listed.
- Matt Damon, The Talented Mr. Ripley, 1998. … and again. They were both rejected by UK director Anthony Minghella.
- Jared Leto, Requiem for a Dream,1999. Tobey passed on a Hubert Selby Jr role oin a Darren Aronofsky film (!!!), so Jared became Ellen Burstyn’s son, Jennifer Connelly’s lover and Marlon Wayans’ pal – in a cast of drug addicts. All in brilliant form. “We recognise the actors,” praised Roger Ebert, “but barely,”
- Henry Thomas All The Pretty Horses, 2000. Tobey had been up for the role in September 1998, when Leo DiCaprio’s agent was talking about $20m!
- Jimmy Fallon, Almost Famous, 2000. “Scheduling was the culprit,” explained writer-director Cameron Crowe. “My writing is sort of deceptively natural to read, but tricky to do with the right rhythm. Tobey knows the rhythm. So does Cusack, and Jason Lee, and a number of others.”
- Ethan Hawke, Training Day, 2001. All the Movie Brats tested to be Denzel Washington’s cop partner – although being more interested in the result of other tests. For Spider-Man. Maguire won Jake Hoyt, did two months weapons and muscle training, but then Hawke became free, after all. Leaving Tobey in great shape to spin his web.
- Edward Norton, 25th Hour, 2001. Tobey or not Tobey… He bought David Benioff’s novel, then decided to swing through Spider-Man. Both guys produced, with Norton using every last cent he got from Red Dragon, 2001, to help the finance the film… and his greatest screen work, worthy of Oscars by the brace.
- Henry Thomas, Gangs of New York, 2002. From Steven Spielberg to Martin Scorsese – ET’s guardian really grows up!
- Colin Farrell, Hart’s War, 2002. Tobey always looked like any older co-stars’s lunch. And far too young to be in WWII, much less a POW camp.
- Orlando Bloom, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. 2002. The first one… Director Gore Verbinski decided that due to The Lord of the Rings franchise. Bloom was more bankable than Maguire, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Ben Peyton (a fairly unknown UK TV actor) and Christopher Masterson. A tough role as Johnny Depp was stealing everything but the rudder as his wondrous Captain Jack Sparrow, with mascara, gold teeth and a Keith Richards’ rock ‘n’ roll shuffle.
- Jeremy Sumpter Peter Pan, 2003. That’s how young he looked… PJ Hogan also looked at Heath Ledger and signed a 14-year-old Californian.
- Lou Taylor Pucci, Thumbsucker, 2004. When still a big deal project with Scarlett Johansson.
- Jake Gyllenhaal, Jarhead, 2004. Still up for he same roles as DiCaprio 12 years later.Christian Bale, Josh Hartnett, Emile Hirsch and Shane West were also seen for US marine Anthony Swoff.He who wrote“For most problems, the Marine is issued a solution. If ill, go to sickbay. If wounded, call a Corpsman. If dead, report to graves registration.”
- Chris O’Donnell, Max Payne, 2008. The role of Jason Colvin went from Spider Man to Batman’s Robin. To paraphrase another Mark Wahlberg film, this one was all Payneand no Gayne.
- Nicolas Cage, Hungry Rabbit Jumps, 2010. Endgame picked up Robert Tannen’s thriller for Maguire – to star in and co-produce. That was in 2008. All changes meant Cage and Mad Mentele-discovery January Jones.
- James Franco, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, 2010. “The movie you may have been expecting, » said Chicago critic Roger Ebert. “No less, no more.” For the attempt to relaunch the Fox franchise. Tobey had been in the mix for Will Rodman – a tribute to the first Apes scenarist Rodman (ie Rod) Serling.
- Jeremy Renner, The Bourne Legacy, 2011. Three was enough for Matt Damon. (Until 2015…!) The studio did not agree and kept the franchise alive by rebooting Jason Bourne as Aaron Cross – “There Was Never Just One.” But who to play him from 20 hopefuls- Erryn Arkin, Adam Brody, Dominic Cooper, Paul Dano, Luke Evans, Michael Fassbender, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Hartnett, Garrett Hedlund, Oscar Isaac (he was made an Outcome super-agent), Taylor Kitsch, Shia LaBeouf, Kellan Lutz, Logan Marshall-Green, Alex Pettyfer, Michael Pitt and Benjamin Walker. Plus Joel Edgerton and Tobey Maguire, who were Great Gatsbying down-under. Renner, Hollywood’s new white hope since The Hurt Locker, 2009, was suggested for the Mission: Impossible.. if ever Tom Cruise retired.
- John Cusack, The Paperboy, 2011. Dropping out of director Lee Daniels’ innocent-on-death-row drama because of his Great Gatsby contract caused delays that meant Colombian Sofia Vergara had to quit, as well.Her Modern Family series came first.
- Rafe Spall, Life of Pi, 2011. Change of Writer in what Chicago critic Roger Ebert called Ang Lee’s “miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery” – covering the 227 days spent by a teenage boy, drifting in a lifeboat with… a Bengal tiger aboard! The Taiwainese Lee went even further in his breaking visual boundaries in his his 2015 film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
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Martin Freeman, The Hobbit trilogy, 2011.
- Bradley Cooper, Jane Got a Gun, 2013. Natalie Portman’s fifth outing as a producer ran into all kinds of trouble. Michael Fassbender quit(replaced by Joel Edgerton) after clashes with Scots director Lynne Ramsay. Then, she quit. Then, Jude Law quit Edgerton’s original role – Lynne being the only reason why Law hadagreed to make the Santa Fe Western in the first place. Bridges was the (way) oldest of Law’s potential successors: double the ages of Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal. (Ramsey’s exit allowed her to join Steven Spielberg’s 2013 Cannes festival jury).
- Cillian Murphy, Transcendence, 2013. Christopher Nolan’s usual cinematographer Wally Pfister was spoilt for choice of stars eager about his directing debut. Murphy had been in the Chris ’n’ Wally shows: The Dark Knight, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises.
- Chis Pine, Z For Zachariah, 2014. Production was halted and by the time all the problems were ironed out, Maguire had reported to another gig. Star Trek’s Pine subbed as Loomis, part of an eternal triangle – which was just a dystopian couple in Robert C O’Brien’s book… and the 1984 BBC TV version.
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Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 24