- Brenton Thwaites, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tails, 2015. The fifth one… Or to put it another way: the worst one. Thirteen years have sailed by since the first and yet the couple played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley now have a strapping son, Henry Turner – who was better as a kid (Lewis McGowan) than the winner of the battle between the Welsh Egerton from Kingsman: The Secret Service, Ansen Elgort, Kgt Hari ngton, Mitchell Hope, Sam Keely, George Mackay. Thwaites beat ’em all. Well, there was more film on him! The Australian was in almost everything else in 2014. Son Of A Gun, The Giver, The Ride, The Signal and Gods Of Egypt with Pirates star Geoffrey Rush. Gods was due out in 2016, Pirates in 2017.
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Alden Ehrenreich, Solo: A Star Wars Story, 2017.
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James Marsden, Sonic the Hedgehog, 2019. For the new movie version of the video game, 15 actors jostled for Tom Wachowski, the Montana cop helping the speedy blue blur alien from another planet in his fight against Jim Carrey’s Dr Robotnik. They were: Elgort, Jack Black, Chris Evans, Bill Hader (also up for voicing Sonic), Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Michael B. Jordan, Adam Pally (also seen for Sonic, he wound up as Wade, Tom’s deputy), Chris Pratt, Paul Rudd, Jason Segal, Justin Timberlake, Milo Ventimiglia, Owen Wilson and Marsden, who was ready for “as many as they want to make. it was so much fun to see Jim enjoying himself again.”
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Austin Butler, Elvis, 2019.
The final six testing voices, gyrating pelvises and lip-lock sneers as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll for Aussie director Baz Luhrmann’s biopic came down (under) to… Ansel Elgort, already booked for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story… Alex Roe, a classmate of my grand-daughter in school in Chiswick at age ten; he became Pat Garrett in the Billy the Kid series… Harry Styles, the One Direction pop idol, who debuted in Dunkirk… Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron… Miles Teller, aka Mr Whiplash, sharing Top Gun: Maverick wih Tom Cruise. Selecting the dreaded Colonel Parker was easier. Tom Hanks. In 2018, Butler worked with Denzel Washington in Broadway’s latest The Icemen Cometh. Baz got a call from D about E. “Look, I’ve just been onstage with this young actor. I’m telling you, his work ethic is unlike anything I’ve ever seen… never seen anyone who devotes every single second of their lives to perfecting a role.” PS Hanks (sharing his producer’s hat with Steven Spielberg) chose Butler to head their latest WWII series, Masters of the Air, TV, 2021.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 4