- Charlize Thereon, Æon Flux, 2005. Obvious title-choice when the actioner was due in 2003 from the director of her 2000 Girlfight breakthrough, Karyn Kusama. But South Africa’s Charlize had just won an Oscar… and nearly broke her neck during stunt training with Cirque du Soleil’s Terry Bartlett.
- Eva Longoria Parker, Desperate Housewives, TV, 2004-08. Turned down Gabrielle to join Lost, TV, 2004-2010. “If you’re not a housewife, then what’s the point?”
- 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: 3