- Brooke Shields,The Blue Lagoon, 1979. While living un Australia, the Honolulu-born Kelly Kamalelehua Smith was discovered at 16 by a fashion photographer. He helped win her commercials and her first audition – despite Grease director Randal Kleiser wanting his shipwrecked couple to be naked throughout the re-make. (They were not). She lost the film for being too sultry… She wed John Travolta in 1991… until her death from breast cancer in 2020. They had met during The Experts, 1987, and she made three more films with JT, including the excremental Battlefield Earth, 2000.
- Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, 1981. The US high school movie..! Researched and written by Cameron Crowe, directed by Amy Heckerling. The rôle: Brad’s foxy sister, Stacy. The choices: Preston, Ellen Barkin, Geena Davis, Jodie Foster (studying at Yale), Diane Lane, Lori Loughlin, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brooke Shields, Elizabeth Shue. Few were keen on joining Richard Romanus in full-frontalism. (The scene was cut to avoid an X-rating!).
- Glenn Close, Fatal Attraction, 1986.
- Jodie Foster, The Accused, 1988.
Awful thing to say. Except it is true. Jodie Foster would never have won her (first) Oscar for this trenchant drama – if actress Kelly McGillis had not been raped in 1982… At first, the role of the rape victim Sarah Tobias was written for Andie MacDowell. She passed. The Paramount suits then saw 34 other young actresses for the (real life) victim. Or, for their own rape bait fantasies – including 16-year-old Alyssa Milano! Foster was refused a test because she was “not sexy enough”! And, anyway, the studio had decided upon McGillis, a high flyer in Paramount’s Witness and Top Gun. And, naturally, she refused point-blank! She knew what it was to be brutally raped and Kelly McGillis had no wish to revisit the horror and agony of her own assault six years earlier. The suits were annoyed. They needed her. She was hot at the box-office, their box-office. They had made her a star!! Eventually, McGillis agreed to play Sarah’s defence attorney – on condition that unsexy Jodie played Sarah! The suits caved, tested Foster and the rest is Oscar history… So is the huge list of talent also seen for Sarah. Starting with the Fatal Attraction also-rans: Preston, Rosanna Arquette, Ellen Barkin, Kim Basinger, Jennifer Beals, Jennifer Grey, Melanie Griffith, Linda Hamilton, Darryl Hannah, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Diane Keaton, Demi Moore, Meg Ryan, Jane Seymour, Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, Debra Winger. And moving on to the younger Melissa Sue Anderson (trying to break her Little House on the Prairie image), Justine Bateman, Valerie Bertinelli, Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Connelly, Joan Cusack, Judy Davis, Kristin Davis, Bridget Fonda, Annabeth Gish, Mariel Hemingway, Kelly LeBrock, Virginia Madsen, Brigitte Nielsen, Tatum O’Neal, Molly Ringwald, Mia Sara, Ally Sheedy, Brooke Shields, Uma Thurman. Oh, and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, said the suits, was “too nice.” Rape victims shouldn’t be nice? Oh, Hollywood! - Jennifer Connelly, The Rocketeer, 1990. A lucky escape from the… Disney-we-have-a-problem… movie. Diane Lane, Elizabeth McGovern, Penelope Ann Miller, Kelly Preston were also in the frame for the hero’s gal, Jenny Blake, projecting, said Chicago critic Roger Ebert, “the same innocent sensuality of the classic B-movie sexpots – an ability to seem totally unaware, for example, that she is wearing a low-cut dress.”
- John Heard, Home Alone, 1990. For the zero roles of Macauley Culkin’s forgetful parents (in a film written for and duly stolen by him), an astonishing 66 stars were considered – including 32 later seen for the hot lovers in Basic Instinct:Kim Basinger, Stockard Channing, Glenn Close, Kevin Costner, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Douglas, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Linda Hamilton, Daryl Hannah, Marilu Henner, Anjelica Huston, Helen Hunt, Holly Hunter, Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Christopher Lloyd, Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Annie Potts, Kelly Preston, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, John Travolta. Other near Moms were Kirstie Alley, Lynda Carter, Kim Cattrall, Geena Davis, Laura Dern, Jennifer Grey, Gates McFadden, Kelly McGillis, Bette Midler, Ally Sheedy, Mary Steenburgen, Debra Winger… and the inevitable unknown: Maureen McCormick, part of The Brady Bunch for seven 1981 chapters.
- Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct,1991.
- Salma Hayek, Breaking Up,1995. The first casting story revealed in a tribute to a dead actor. Not the time, nor place. But Russell Crowe gauchely recalled auditioning with Kelly for the fllm of Michael Cristofer’s stage play. “I haven’t seen her much, but when I did, she was always the same sparkly eyed gem.”
- Julianne Moore, The Shipping News, 2001. The Travoltas planned to do it together. Final duo: Moore and Kevin Spacey.
- Carla Gugino, Spy Kids, 2001. Too soon after the birth of Jett Travolta.
Birth year: 1962Death year: 2020Other name: Casting Calls: 10