- Françoise Dorléac, Cul-de-sac, 1966. Polish director Roman Polanski lost his desired newcomer to a Boulting brothers contract. Hence his bitchy comment: “Her very special looks weren’t matched by her acting experience.”
- Susannah York, They Shoot Horses Don’t They, 1969. Barbara Steele told me in London how her then-husband, scenarist James Poe, had written Alice for her.
- Genevieve Bujold, Anne of the Thousand Days, 1968. When Peter O’Toole was due to be her husband, Henry VIII. Also up for the chop: Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Olivia Hussey and Elizabeth Taylor – when Richard Burton finally became the king.
- Ania Marson, Nicholas and Alexandra, 1970. The suitably regal Marson was among nine young Brits – Jane Asher (an ITV Juliet in 1962), Angela Down, the Montreal-born Lynda Bellingham, , Judy Matheson, Mary Maude, Charlotte Rampling (who, of course, became the most famous), plus two actors’ daughters, Donald’s Angela Pleasence and Dinah Sheridan’s Jenny Hanley – tested for the oldest child of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia: the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. The entire royal family was assassinated in 1918.
- Susan George, Straw Dogs, 1971.
Sweet Sue was too strong – heroic enough to save the day for Dustin Hoffman as her milque-toast husband… but wary, like others, of how far director Sam Peckinpah wanted to push the rape scene. Hoffman confessed to making it just for the money but still objected to his Mr Milque-toast having such a nymphettish wife. Sweet little Sue, however, was made of sterner stuff. She fought Hollywood heavyweight Peckinpah and bravely said she’d quit rather than agree to his overly explicit portrayal of her rape. Peckinpah gave in and kept his camera on her face, not her body. Cuts by the UK censor then made the (three minute) sequence worse by actually implying sodomy. (Irish censors cut the entire scene and a global video release was banned until… 2002). Jacqueline Bisset, Judy Geeson Linda Hayden, Judy Huxtable, Jennie Linden, Hayley Mills, Helen Mirren, Charlotte Rampling and Carol White were, inevitably, also in the mix for Amy – the name of Sue’s future production company.
- Susannah York, Images, 1972. All set until director Robert Altman fell for Susannah as Jane Eyre during an Aer Lingus flight to Europe.
- Jacqueline Bisset,The Thief Who Came To Dinner, 1973. Pregnant with her first son, future stage director Barnaby Southcombe.
- Corinne Clery, The Story of O, France, 1975. Réalisateur Just Jaeckin aimed high. Too high. Because he was no Liliana Cavani or Luchino Visconti..
- Laura Antonelli, L’Innocente, Italy, 1976. Rampling regretted refusing. “I was ill at the time. Visconti, as well – and he gave it to a typical D’Annunzio femme. She looks like Barbara Leoni, the great love of D’Annunzio.” Alain Delon rejected his beloved Luchino Visconti… “I didn’t want to see Visconti diminished – in a wheelchair. I loved and respected him too much for that.” So no Delon and (ex-lover) Romy Schneider (a Visconti favourite… as, of course, was Delon). No Ryan O’Neal and Julie Christie, either. Nor Charlotte Rampling, another Visconti favourite. He made do with Giancarlo Giannini and Antonelli for what proved his 21st and final film.Folllowing a stroke, he died in 1976, ten months after the premiere at the ‘75 Cannes festival.
- Marthe Keller, Marathon Man, 1976 “I choose the parts that challenge me to break through my own barriers. To discover what normal means, you have to surf a tide of weirdness.”
-
Jacqueline Bisset, The Deep, 1976. Wanted. By Columbia Pictures. Someone… anyone “looking like Ursula Andress in a bikini.” (So why didn’t they ask her to be Gail?) Bisset beat fellow Brits Samantha Eggar, Charlotte Rampling, plus Candice Bergen, Katharine Ross and newcomers Susan Blakely, Christina Raines. But disliking the “silly and unfair” Andress line, she refused to be forced into a wet tee-shir!! Still riding the wave of The Detective, Bullitt, Airport, etc, she wanted Nick Nolte’s second billing. He refused. Until meeting her…
-
Susan Clark, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, 1976. She’d had an earlier date with Sherlock Holmes that year in Roger Moore’s TV film, Sherlock Holmes in New York.
-
Jane Birkin, Le diable au coeur, France, 1976. Warners poured money in, hoping for another Last Tango In Paris. (Pouah! said one French critic). Realisateur Bernard Queysanne wrote it for Birkin “and for her alone,” although she told him to take fellow-Brit, Charlotte. “For perverted scenes and bed work where you’re all tied up with ropes, there’s no one like her.”
- Bibi Andersson, I’ve Never Promised You A Rose Garden, 1977. The first plan then was that Bibi would be the shrink, Dr Fred (!). With Maria Schneider as her patient.
- Susannah York, Eliza Fraser, Australia, 1977. Director Tim Burstall “didn’t think she was a comedy actress.” Obviously Sue made him laugh – they had an immediate affair.
- Susan Penhaligon, Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange), Holland-Belgium, 1977. Dutch director Paul Verhoeven needed a few Brits for his true WWII tale. Charlotte Rampling and Julie Christie obviously studied the scenario and could have written this 1997 comment by the New York Times critic Janet Maslin. “The film’s two main English characters, an officer (Edward Fox) and his trampy, ridiculous assistant (Susan Penhaligon), are so weirdly caricatured that they may make a great comic impression on American viewers.”
- Isabelle Adjani, The Driver, 1978. Recovering from birth of second son, David Jarre.
- Jacqueline Bisset, The Greek Tycoon, 1978. Charlotte passed on the thinly disguised Jackie Onassis.
- Helen Mirren, Caligula, 1978.
- Marie-France Pisier, Chanel Solitaire, France, 1980. Another rejection of a real life role:Coco Chanel’s.
- Meryl Streep,The French Lieutenant’s Woman,1981. Top choice of two companies in 1975.Another two companies later, it reached Meryl.
- Marie-France Pisier, Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), Austria-West Germany-France-Italy, 1981. After Alexander Kordafailed to produce his dream movie, the Thomas Mann classic was among the 1973 projects of Italian maestro Luchino Visconti. He met with Mann’s second son, Golo, and talked to Rampling and (of course) Helmut Berger. Nothing happened(nor for the Plan B filming Mann’s L’Intrus). German director Hans W Geissendorfer made the ’81 version.
- Patricia Hodge, Betrayal, 1982. With Julie Christie, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep gone (and potential directors Mike Nichols and Louis Malle), Rampling entered the list for producer of Sam Spiegel’s final and ill-chosen film… “This can be as important as Brief Encounter, ” said Sam, perhaps forgetting that had been a David Lean film. And, as proved by all Spiegel films since The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, without Lean. Spiegel was zilch.
- Isabelle Adjani, Subway, France, 1984. The new, hot Paris auteur, Luc Besson, wrote Helena for Rampling but her situation was “too complicatedf.” While awaiting a start date, Besson helmed Adjani’s ”Pull marine” video-clip. They got on well, so he took a chance and offered her the role. “This was not written for you but…” and the rest of his pitch was lost amid her raucous laughter. “This is the first time I’ve been offered a project that was not ‘written just for you’!” That was at 8pm. She called him at 2am. “Yes!” Suddenly, the scenario that most French film people had called crap was the most important movie in town because the great Adjani had OKed it.
- Francesca Annis, Dune, 1984.
- Bebe Neuwirth, Bugsy, 1991. French New Wave ikon Jean-Luc Godard was forever nearly beating Hollywood – Bonnie and Clyde, Lolita… In 1979 he tried to set up his own Bugsy Siegel biopic, for Jean-Paul Belmondo, Vittorio Gassman, Diane Keaton – and Charlotte as (Gary Cooper’s lover) Countess di Frasso.
- Kate O’Mara, Absolutely Fabulous, TV, 1995-2003.No thanks said Rampling to the offer of Patsy Stone’s sister Jackie (a UK Jackie Onassis). Creator and star Jennifer Saundersthen called up Kate…
- Anne Reid, The Mother, 2002. A granny falling for her daughter’s builder boyfriend! The Money Men said Julie Christie – orCharlotte.Or no money.Director Roger Michell, fuelled by the success of Notting Hill, said:No. “The ‘fairy story’ of the film is of someone who is almost dead being brought back to life… She had to be a woman who not only didn’t have a sexual present but, for all intents and purposes, didn’t have a sexual past, either. This is about someone who is almost invisible and she turns into a kind of 22-year-old. We saw a few actresses but there was never any competition once we met Anne. Some part of her experience chimed particularly with this role and made her understand great chunks of it in a very intuitive and instinctive way.”
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 28