Don Johnson

Posted on 6 November 2023by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

Dirk Benedict, Battlestar Galactica, 1978-1979. Johnson’s Southern accent just wasn’t galactic. Benedict modelled his Starbuck on James Garner’s Maverick. Katee Sackhoff’s kick-ass version of Starbuck was part of the reason the show only really took off in its 2004-2008 second coming.
William Hurt, Body Heat, 1981. Sure was sexy enough, just did not look dumb enough.
William Petersen, Manhunter, 1985. “Hey! Get Don- he’d make a great Will Graham!”Having locked in Michael Mann to direct the first Hannibal Lecter (then, Lektor), the studio smart-asses thought it would be a clever move to reunite him with his TV series star as the FBI man.Not realising that would have the public thinking this was aMiami Vice chapter.
Rex Smith, Street Hawk, TV 1985. There were two pilots called Falconer that season. Neither glowed, although this one went beyond its poilot, at least. Johnson was up for Jesse Mach, secret crime-fighter on his snazzy mo’bike… until NBC OKed a little something called Miami Vice. Street lasted 13 episodes, Miami, five years.
Kevin Costner, The Untouchables, 1986.
“I’m better than De Niro, I’m better than Pacino. I’ve got the talent, they’ve got the material… I read a ton of scripts and there aren’t many that blow my skirt up.” Or out it another way, he was contracted to Miami Vice… as the highest paid TV star. Don congratulated his pal Costner on winning the Eliot Ness role, never letting on that he’d been in the mix. Or not until they co-starred in The Tin Cup ten years later.
Mel Gibson, Lethal Weapon, 1986. In all, 39 possibilities for the off-kilter, ’Nam vet cop Martin Riggs – not as mentally-deranged as in early drafts (he used a rocket launcher on one guy!) Some ideas were inevitable: Alec Baldwin, Michael Biehn (shooting Aliens),Jeff Bridges, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Al Pacino, Sean Penn, William Petersen, Dennis Quaid, Christopher Reeve, Kurt Russell, Charlie Sheen, Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, Bruce Willis. Some were inspired: Bryan Brown, Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum (he inherited Gibson’s role in The Fly), William Hurt (too dark for Warner Bros), Michael Keaton, Michael Madsen, Liam Neeson, Eric Roberts. Some were insipid: Jim Belushi, Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Costner, Kevin Kline, Stephen Lang, Michael Nouri (he joined another cop duo in The Hidden), Patrick Swayze. Plus TV cops Don Johnson, Tom Selleck… three foreign LA cops: Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dutch Rutger Hauer and French Christophe(r) Lambert. And the inevitable (Aussie) outsider Richard Norton.
Robert De Niro, Midnight Run,1987. There were 23 possibilites for the lean, mean skip-tracer (tracing felons who skipped bail) – on the run from the FBI and the Mob after capturing Vegas embezzler Charles Grodin. Who knew De Niro could be more subtle at comedy than… Johnsobn, Jeff Bridges, Charles Bronson, Michael Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Ryan O’Neal (!), Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, Mickey Rourke, Kurt Russell, John Travolta, Jon Voight and even the musclebound Arnie and Sly – Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Director Martin Brest, that’s who.
Bruce Willis, Die Hard, 1987.
There were 17 possible John McClanes… From Michael Madsen, Tom Berenger, and top TV heroes Don Johnson and Richard Dean Anderson to A-listers Charles Bronson, James Caan, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone… and Frank Sinatra? Yes, well, Roderick Thorpe’s book, Nothing Lasts Forever, sequelised The Detective – and that 1967 film starred Sinatra (as Joe Leland, changed here to McClane) and so Sinatra had first dibs on any sequels. At age 73, old Rheumy BlueEyes wisely passed. Otherwise it could have been “Dooby-dooby-do” in place of “Yippee-ki-yay.” In his 1980 move debut, The First Deadly Sin, Willis is seen leaving a bar as Sinatra walks in. So it flows… He was soon taking roles from most of those on the McClane list.
Kevin Costner, Bull Durham, 1987. Ron Shelton had one helluva job trying to win backing for his directing debut. “Baseball? Get outa here. Ball movies don’t sell.” But his producer Thom Mount was part-owner of the real Durham Bulls squad and recognised what Roger Ebert would call “a sports movie that knows what it is talking about – because it knows so much about baseball and so little about love.” Orion stumped up $9m, eight weeks, creative freedom – the cast cut their costs because of the script. For the minor-league veteran, Crash Davis, Shelton looked at: Alec Baldwin, Tom Berenger, Jeff Bridges, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Don Johnson, Tommy Lee Jones (he was baseball icon Ty Cobb in Shelton’s Cobb, 1994), Michael Keaton, Stephen Lang, Nick Nolte (more into football), Bill Paxton, Ron Perlman, Dennis Quaid, Kurt Russell (who worked on the script with Shelton), Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis – and even three foreigners to the game: Aussie Mel Gibson, French Christophe(r) Lambert and Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger. Result: more sports from Shelton (basketball, golf, boxing) and more baseball movies from Hollywood: A League of Their Own, Eight Men Out (with Sheen), Field of Dream (Costner), Major League (Berenger and Sheen).
Billy Dee Williams, Batman, 1988.
Mark Harmon, The Presido, 1988. Lee Marvin and Jeff Bridges as two cops with a history became Sean Connery and Don Johnson (Miami Vice got in the way) and wound up as Connery and Harmon… Strange that so many – Alec Baldwin, Michael Biehn, Jeff Bridges, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Michael Keaton, Dolph Lundgren, Bill Pullman, Dennis Quaid, Kurt Russell, Patrick Swayze, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis… even rival biceps Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone – were contacted for the second banana rôle. And a bad one. Matching what Chicago critic Roger Ebert called “a clone, of a film assembled out of spare parts from… the cinematic junkyard.”
Richard Gere, Internal Affairs, 1989. ’Tis the season to be cops…. with two offers… UK director Mike Figgis said Paramount wanted Mel Gibson or Kurt Russell (big hits in ’88’s Tequila Sunrise) as the badass cop-cum-hit man. “If we’d hired a movie star to play Peck,” noted producer Frank Mancuso Jr, “we might not have been able to so successfully explore the darkness of the character.” Some 19 other stars – Johnson, Alec Baldwin, Tom Berenger, Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Keaton, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino, Christopher Reeve, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta… and four outsiders Richard Dean Anderson, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Ron Silver – all passed Peck to Gere for a double whammy comeback with Pretty Woman. “I’ve never been away,” snapped Gere. Oh, but he had. Almost to Palookaville.
Kurt Russell, Tango & Cash, 1989. Next… ? Sylvester Stallone was Raymond Tango – without question. But who would he accept as his equally frame cop pardner, Gabriel Cash? After Patrick Swayze ran (to solo billing in Road House), the list was long… Johnson, Michael Biehn, Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Costner, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Michael Keaton, Ray Liotta, Liam Neeson, Michael Nouri, Gary Oldman, Robert Patrick, Bill Paxton, Ron Perlman, Dennis Quaid, Gary Sinise. Plus three future Sly co-strs: Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis and James Woods. They all lost out on the debatable pleasure of four directors! From the Russian Andrei Konchalovsky to, secretly, Stallone.
Tim Robbins, Jacob’s Ladder, 1990. The queue to be ’Nam war casualty Jacob Singer was long… Robbins, Richard Gere, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino… even Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson, so far down the pike that year thay they wound up sharing the dreadful Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.
Nick Nolte, The Prince of Tides, 1991. Director and star Barbara Streisand offered the role of the unemployed, aimless and miserably married Tom Wingo.
Michael Douglas, Basic Instinct, 1991.
Kevin Costner, JFK, 1991.
Tom Sizemore, Heat, 1995. Auteur Michael Mann revived fthe failing Johnson career with the classy Miami Vice series, 1984- 1989, but the actor passed Michael Cheritto to Sizemore.
David Caruso, CSI: Miami, TV, 2002-2010. An early suggestion from producer Jerrry Bruckheimer forLieutenant Horatio Caine in the first of the Crime Scene Investigation spin-offs. But Don had done Florida – over six years in Miami Vice.
James Caan, Las Vegas, TV, 2003-2008. Don was considered for the Montecito Casino & Hotel security chief, Ed Deline. Of course he was. The series was based on his notion: Casino Eye. “I read a ton of scripts and there aren’t many that blow my skirt up.”
Mark Harmon, NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, TV, 2003-2010. Tiring of series, after the 333 combined episodes of Miami Vice, 1984-1990, and Nash Bridges 1996-2001, Johnson turned down creator Donald P Bellasario’s invitation to play the patriarchal agent Jethro Gibbs.
Tom Berenger, Inception, 2009. Despite not having had a decent movie since Dennis Hopper’s mercurial Hot Spot in 1989, Johnson turned down the offer from the Dark Knight’s UK auteur, Christopher Nolan, to play Browning. Maybe the A-List cast – Leonardo Di Caprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine etc – put him off.

Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 22

WELCOME

to the films the stars did not make. The movies that never were. The most definitive collation of casting stories. Check up on all the films - of yesterday, today and tomorrow - that your favourite stars never made... A cast of thousands - 8,063 actors - to click on... More than 40 years in the making! And 2,777,633 words of spirited text.

The ultimate in movie trivia ... Better! Exactly the kind of history that Hollywood deserves. Back to front. Upside-down. Inside out. Full of flashbacks, close-ups, tracking shots (and, alas some badly edited sequences - sorry about that!) forming a fascinating, new and often bizarre flip-side perspective on your treasured movies and stars

HE SAID

“They’re doing stuff, but not with me. I’m not doing any more.” – Adam Driver on no more Kylo Ren/Ben Solo ... Or is it that there will be no more Star Wars?

“I’ve been acting for 42 years and then you make one cocktail…” – Stanley Tucci on his new fame as a TV food and cookery expert.

"The point is it's very hard work and you have to really want to do it. It has to be something that you're burning to say." – Martin Scorsese on directing at 80 and thinking “possibly only one more”.

“Whether you are a competent actor, or an artist, is incidental. The main business is: you’re product. I had a hard time steadying myself against that stuff.” – Robert Redford.

“I’ve never done the same thing twice and how many people can say that?” – Tom Hanks… forgetting his two successive Oscars.

“I was so excited when I got the script for Silent Night. There’s no dialogue in the entire movie! I thought this would be very good for me because it lets me use my gifts for telling a story visually. – John Woo on his Hollywood comeback at 77.

“I’ve gotta be nice about Marvel movies, because I named myself after a Stan Lee character named Luke Cage. What am I going to do, put Marvel movies down? Stan Lee is my surrealistic father.” – Nic Cage.

“The man who invented mornings was no Christian.” – Peter O’Toole.

“The moustache did the acting.” – Anthony Hopkins on Howards End.

“It’s very difficult to get 100 million people to watch anything,” – writer-director Joe Russo.

“I gave him a little part in Looper, where he got to be shot in the face by Bruce Willis. He was just so overjoyed… like a little kid.” – director Rian Johnson on his father.

“I'm not an actor - and I've got 64 films to prove it!” – Victor Mature.

“If you cast it right, you don’t have to tell the actors what to do.” – John Huston.

CCC CLIPS

>> Name Game. James Spader really started something with his Blacklist series. He played – remember? – Reddington. And now we have Austin Butler and, Emma Stone are in making Eddington… and newbie Glenn Powell is Huntingdon, his tenth gig since Top Gun: Maverick. Perhaps it’s time to re-issue Carrington… with, among others, Steven Waddington!

>> Christopher Nolan says “No, sadly no – no truth to those rumours.” About making the next Bond. So, no Cillian Murphy as Jimbo, then?

>> Rolling Stone. Those Poor Things, Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, are – naturally – in the next release of their Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s Emma’s third Yorgos collaboration. Most likely she’ll be in his next one, too, a re-make of the South Korean hit, Save the Green Planet. That was a comedy. But one can never categorise a Lanthimos experience. After all this one was first titled… And.

>> Taylor Swift’s guy, US football superstar Travis Kelce, is making moves on movies. To be as famous as Dwayne Johnson. Although people are now beginning to ask: Dwyane Whosis?

>>Brandon Routh was Superman back in the day. Today he’s in…Ick.

>> A star sure was born! Lady Gaga now getting $10million for Joker 2…

>> Sean Ono Lennon says Emma Stone should play his dad. Now there’s a thought. After all, Cate Blanchett played Bob Dylan…

>> Sly Stallone has come this far without bothering with serial killers but that’s what he’s chasing in The Epiphany. He plays a retiring cop - what else at 78?

>> Thirty years after the first, Neve Campbell returns in Scream 7. She refused #6 over a money row…

>> Beatles director Sam Mendes made Skyfall and Spectre and another actor who has played John Lennon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, might yet be the next 007…

>> Ryan Gosling tipped to be join the Marvelverse. (They need him more than he them). Henry Cavill may follow – so definitely no Bond then. Not after Argylle. If anyone witnessed that accident, could they call the appropriate authorities.

>> Will Smith comes back (or so he hopes) in an almost suicide squad blasting drug dealers in Sugar Bandits… while Colin Farrell settles for just Sugar – back to his usual smoothie looks after The Penguin…

>> White Lotus 3 resurrects Parker Posey, Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Charlotte Le Bon, Scott Glenn and introduces Patrick Schwarzenegger. But which one is going to flash…something?

CHAMPION'S LEAGUE

The battle for the top spot between Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson has – I think – come to an end. Recently, we‘ve seen Marlon leading Jack by one or two movies – and then, almost immediately, vice-versa. The gap is much wider now between the former Mulholland Drive neighbours. Latest research dug up more titles for Jack - Mr Mom, A Christmas Story, Striptease, The Bicentennial Man, Expend4bles – so that he is now safe (?) at the top of league with 177 films he chose not to make compared to Brando’s 172. But you know - you never know…

(The full list of their huge lists of bypassed films are not on their pages for now - one of the hassles being tackled in our - yes, very slow! – restructuring).

Marlon Brando – 177
Jack Nicholson – 172
Paul Newman – 160
Cary Grant – 150
Robert De Niro – 140
Tom Cruise – 135
Dustin Hoffman – 126
Mel Gibson – 118
Sean Connery, Al Pacino – 117

Highest Brit remains, as always, Sir Sean at 117… followed by Laurence OIivier, 93; Richard Burton, 87; Peter O’Toole, 79; Elizabeth Taylor, 73; Peter Sellers, 72; Dirk Bogarde and James Mason, 68; Olivia De Havilland, 58; Vivien Leigh and Gary Oldman, 57.

Highest lady is Bette Davis, 97; Jodie Foster, 84; Michelle Pfeiffer, 81; Katharine Hepburn, 79; Julie Christie, 76; Meryl Streep, 75; Elizabeth Taylor, 73; Nicole Kidman, 72: Jane Fonda, 70; Julia Roberts, 68.

Younger Brigade: Johnny Depp 108; Leo, 75; Jim Carrey, 70; Madonna, 62; Natalie Portman, 57; Aishawarya Rai Bachchan, 40; Bridget Fonda, 36: Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Uma Thurman, 35; Jake Gyllenhall, 33: Ben Affleck, 31.

(You'll find the full list at Champions in the Main Menu)

A BOND MISS

Is Léa Seydoux now a spy…or, to be more polite, a talent scout for Eon Productions? 007’s girl in both Spectre and No Time to Die appears to assisting the (rather quiet) search for the next Jimbo. In La bête (The Beast), one of her many new French films, Léa co-stars with Hammersmith’s George MacKay - Sam Mendes’ find for 1917. He learned French for the film, so this may not be his last Paris booking.

As Gabrielle and Louis, they work extremely well together as star-crossed lovers in three time-lines: 1904, 1914 and 2044. And he looks the business in his retro tuxedo. ‘Twould be fascinating to cast an eye over her report for Barbara Broccoli’s eyes only. On verra as Léa (and now even George) would say. We’ll see.

SHE SAID

“You need your parents to set boundaries and hold you accountable and keep you away from, like, weird people.” – Scarlett Johansson on surviving as a child actor.

“I was so deeply in love with Bella, it terrified me not to live up to her as a character. I felt like I was failing her in the first week, and failing Yorgos [Lanthimos]. ). It was just difficult. I could talk to him about it, but I couldn’t talk to her about it. “ – Emma Stone on making Poor Things, leading to her second Oscar.

“Everything was so beautiful up on that screen. That make-believe world was much more pleasant than anything I was experiencing. I didn’t like reality. I wanted to be in the movies, even though I knew I didn’t look like the other women on the screen. My mother said, ‘you better learn to type,’ but I didn’t listen. Somehow, some way, thank you God, it all came true.” – Barbra Streisand, receiving lifetime achievement honour from the Screen Actors Guild.

“If I arrive at a moment in the history of cinema where I am legally obliged to have some kind of police on my set telling me what I’m allowed to do, I would rather stop filming sex scenes completely.” – French director Mia Hansen-Løve.

“I’m not one to sit around doin’ nothin’, I would never retire, I’ll just hopefully drop dead in the middle of a song onstage, someday, hopefully one I’ve written.” – Dolly Parton.

“Playing it safe doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. You have to take chances. especially if you’re a black woman. You have no choice.” – Halle Berry.

“The more famous an actress becomes, the less she's allowed to eat.” – Lana Turner.

“I don’t do T&A very well because I haven’t got much of either.” – Tea Leoni.

“I was an idiot in terms of career-building, but I had a great time.” – Sally Kellerman.

“As you get older, you realise your parents aren't these superheroes. They're actually people.” – Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.

“Everybody thought I was crazy. And by the way, I thought I was crazy.” – Jennifer Lopez on spending $20m of her own money on making This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.

“It’s dangerous to repeat performances. It becomes the sole thing on your gravestone.” – Helen Mirren on playing The Queen in The Queen and on stage in The Audience.

“I think I was offered every Marilyn Monroe script ever. I was like: Is this the end of the road creatively?’” – Scarlett Johansson on surviving as a star.

WAIT & SEE...

This is such a busy year for movies that various releases have been postponed until 2025… Captain America: Brave New World, Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, Games of Thrones spin-off The Hedge Knight (not about a gardener), Ke Huy Quan’s actioner With Love, John Wick’s spin-off, Ballerina, Fast X :part 2, Avatar 3, Jurassic World 4, Black Mirror 7, Mission: Impossible 8, Fantastic Four, Superman and the dreaded Michael bio – more like horror film, surely. Oh and no The Batman 2 or Harry P TV series until 2026.