Mia Farrow – Crawley's Casting Calls

Charmian Carr, The Sound of Music, 1964. Maureen O’Sullivan’s daughter was in director Robert Wise’s loop for Liesel Von Trapp – with three other daughters of the famous: Charlie’s Geraldine Chaplin, Judy Garland’s Liza Minnelli and Ann Sothern’s Tisha Sterling. Plus Kim Darby, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate and Lesley Ann Warren. Critic Pauline Kael famously tried to bury “the sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat” but it saved Fox from the near bankruptcy of the Cleopatra debacle.
Julie Christie, Fahrenheit 451, 1966. When shooting was slated for the summer of ’64, fireman Montag’s women were aimed, said the rumours, at French favourites Tippi Hedren and Jean Seberg as his wife and and mistress. Codswallop! Two years later, the nouvelle vague icon François Truffaut decided against Mia Farrow, Jane Fonda or Florence Henderson, deciding that Julie Christie – en route to her Darling Oscar and Doctor Zhivago – should play both sides of Ray Bradbury’s coin. Precisely the reason why a jealous Terence Stamp quit and his ditto replacement, Oskar Werner, loathed the film. Just not quite as much as Truffaut loathed Werner!
Jacqueline Bisset, The Detective, 1968. “I don’t think a man and his wife should act together,” said the titular Frank Sinatra. “Least that goes for us.”So why was he so furious when Mia was delayed by director Roman Polanski’s lengthy perfectionism on Rosemary’s Baby. Following dinner with the couple, production designer Richard Sylbert felt Frank’s view was: If she didn’t make the film with him, the marriage was over. And that’s what happened. Old Livid Eyes sent his lawyer to the Polanski set to deliver divorce papers to Mia! And he told Fox to replace his wife… Bisset was leaving for a Paris test after a miserableHollywood debut in The Sweet Ride.when told to stick around.”I knew vaguely what it was for. They were seeing every girl in Hollywood. We had lunch in the commissary with the director and producer and they said: We’ve decided. I said: Well, that’s a bit quick! They said: Go to wardrobe! I suppose Sinatra had OK’d me privately.,. seen some wild Sweet Ride footage. If he had disliked me, I certainly wouldn’t have been in the picture.” Which explains why no Suzy Parker or Suzanne Pleshette.
Michèle Breton, Performance, 1968.
Both desired leading ladies were injured. Tuesday Weld had a busted shoulder and Mia Farrow a broken arm… and marriage. Breton played herself. Or ex-lover (and co-director) Donald Cammell’s version of herself.“Warners wanted to burn the film,” co-helmer Nicolas Roeg told me in London. “They said even the bath water was dirty!” Losing Tuesday as Pherber (busted shoulder) greatly increased the rock mystique as the truly stoned Pallenberg was the lover of first Brian Jones, then Keith Richards – and legend insists that Mick and Anita really had sex on-camera; certainly the labs processing the film destroyed much of their “obscene” footage. No use asking Anita for the truth… “I was stoned for most of the shoot.” Richards was so sick with jealousy about their love scenes that he refused to play on Mick’s “Memo From Turner” song. (Ry Cooder substituted) “She was extraordinary, amazing,” said Nic Roeg. “I’ve been bloody lucky with women.” Not with critics, Richard Schickel called it “the most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have ever seen.” He was so wrong. Ask Quentin Tarantino.
Kim Darby, True Grit, 1968. Producer Hal Wallis’ first choice agreed… kinda. When making Secret Ceremony in London, she told Robert Mitchum her next gig would be for director Henry Hathaway. “Forget it!” said Mitchum. Hathaway was a somafabitch and she’d hate him. (Stuntman Dean Smith said “Old Henry would eat anybody’s ass out!’). Mia asked Wallis to replace Hathaway with her Rosemary’s Baby director, Roman Polanski. Wallis refused and replaced her with Darby – discovered on TV a month before shooting started in Colorado. Also in the Mattie mix: Duke’s teenage daughter Aissa, Geneviève Bujold, singer Karen Carpenter (another Duke idea), Sally Field, Sondra Locke, one of Charlie’s Angels, Jaclyn Smith, Tuesday Weld. Plus past and future Duke co-stars Michele El Dorado Carey and Jennifer Rio Lobo O’Neill.
Jean Seberg, Paint Your Wagon, 1968. Julie (and her usual reserve: Sally Ann Howes), Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Lesley Ann Warren andTuesday Weld all passed on the rose between two thorns, Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin Diana Rigg proved unwell. Kim Novak pounced. But the US star of the French nouvelle vaguewon Elizabeth and, for a while, Eastwood. She even started divorcing hubby for him. Until the unit returned from Oregon to LA and she no longer existed for him.
Marianne Faithful, Hamlet, 1969. Succeeding Faye Dunaway in a RichardHarris plan beaten to the soliloquy by Nicol Williamson’s great Dane for Tony Richardson.
Candice Bergen, The Adventurers,1969. Farrow passed on Sue Ann Daley – pulp writer Harold Robbins’ take on the Woolworths heiress, Barbara Hutton. Just as Alain Delon and George Hamilton refused to be the womanising Dax Xenos – the Robbins’ version of the Dominican diplomat-playboy, Porfiro Rubirosa, of the famously massive penis. UK director Lewis Gilbert (better at James Bondage) agreeed with the general consensus that his film was… terrible! Bergen had one of the best lines: “This is really humiliating.”
Liza Minnelli, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, 1969. A sixth consecutive flop from a producer-director-ogre Otto Preminger totally out of whack with the 60s/70s public. Even Paramount vp Peter Bart said the drama – about three hospital patients, physically, mentally or sexually scarred, moving in together – was “intrinsically down beat and depressing.” Right.
Elizabeth Taylor, The Only Game In Town, 1970. “I’ve had a new experience in my life,” yells Liz Taylor as she thumps onveteran director George Stevens’door at the Paris George V hotel at 1.55am. “Thanks to you, I’ve been fired from a picture.” Stevens tries to explain, Sinatra-Taylor fine, Beatty-Taylor no good, for such a fragile little piece – which is exactly what Farrow is. “But what the hell…let’s see what happens.”Not much.
Kitty Winn, Panic in Needle Park, 1970. Up for Helen but director Jerry Schatzberg (rightly) prefered the unknown Kitty – in the first and most memorable of her 21 screen roles.
Vanessa Redgrave, Mary, Queen of Scots, 1971. Following, Mick Jagger’s Performance, producer Sandy Lieberson’s second UK film should have been Alexander Macken drick directing Queen Mia and King Oliver Reed. Universal’s musical excecutive chairs cancelled all that. Genevieve Bujold was not keen on another executed 16th Century royal, having already been beheaded as Henry VIII’s second wife, Ann Boleyn, in A Thousand Days for the same Hollywood producer, Hal Wallis. He next looked over Farrow, Jane Fonda, Sophia Loren(!) Maggie Smith. Redgrave (first booked for Elizabeth I) was sixth choice.
Diane Keaton, The Godfather, 1971.
Goldie Hawn, Butterflies Are Free, 1972. Original notion: Mia and the play’s Broadway star, Keir Dullea.
Charlotte Rampling, Il portiere di notte/The Night Porter, Italy, 1974. Italian director Liliana Cavani’s first thought for the former concentration camp victim who suddenly meets again – and loves – her old SS captor.Dirk Bogarde and Mia would have looked like her Sinatra marriage. Paedophiliac.
Mireille Darc Les seins de glac (UK: Someone Is Bleeding), France-Italy, 1974. Talk about the power game… Paris auteur Jean-Pierre Mocky was invited to writer-direct a film of Rjchard Matheson’s 1953 novel, Someone is Bleeding, with a French tile meaning: Icy Breasts! Mocky signed up Delpn, Jon Finch and Mia Farrow as the woman who kills any man getting too close… With four weeks to go, Delon phones. “I’ve been thinking – it’s Mireille Darc and Michel Duchaussoy,” (Darc was his lover). Mocky replied: “Alain, I love Mireille Darc, but I don’t see her in this role.” Delon snaps: “It’s that or nothing”. And he hung up. Delon switched his services to Les granges brûlées. Mocky decided to take over his role opposite Jane Birkin. She proves unavaiaible. Shooting cancelled. Delon bides his time and pounces on the rjghts when they became available. He hires Georges Lautner to direct in 1974. With Delon, Darc and Michel – er, no Claude Brasseur, all of a sudden.
Cybill Shepherd, Taxi Driver, 1975.
Jenny Agutter, The Eagle Has Landed, 1976. A nothing role – the English country girl besotted with creepy Irtsh spy Richard Harris – slowing up an otherwise decent war thriller.
Susan Sarandon, Pretty Baby, 1977. The plot sickens… A prostitute allows her 12-year-old daughter’s virginity to be auctioned off in a brothel in the red-light Storyville district of New Orleans, circa 1917. Elegant French director Louis Malle saw 29possible pretty Violets – and another 19 actresses for her mother: Candice Bergen, Cher, Julie Christie, Glenn Close (passed), Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Farrah Fawcett (passed), Jane Fonda (with Jodie Foster as her daughter), Goldie Hawn (preferred Foul Play), Anjelica Huston, Diane Keaton, Sylvia Kristel (Emmanuelle, herself), Liza Minnelli, Cybil Shepherd, Sissy Spacek, Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver. Plus Joan Collins, who suggested Jasmine Maimone, her screen daughter in that year’s Magnum Cop, would make a fine Violet. Louis Malle and Sarandon became lovers and also made Atlantic City, 1980… the year he married Bergen until his 1995 death.
Kathleen Quinlan, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, 1977. At one time in it’s chequered history, French realisateur Claude Chabrolwas due to make the film with Farrow.She had made his Docteur Popaul in 1972.
Karl Johnson, The Tempest, 1979. For his 1975 plan about the exiled Milanese Duke Prospero, UK director Michael Powell obtained Mia as Ariel, a mischievous spirit (usually male) and reluctant slave of Prospero – due to be James Mason. Farrow’s then husband, Andre Previn, was due to supply the score. None of it happened! And that was the end of Powell’s 25 years trying to film the Shakespeare play. According to Dominic Nolan in The Greatest Movies You’ll Never See book, Derek Jarman felt he’d inherited Powell’s obsession. Hah! He made it a (typically) homoerotic job of it in 1979. With Arial (obviously) as a man again. But “in a white jump suit and white makeup,” scorned New York Times critic Vincent Canby, “as if he were on his way to a mime performance.”
Liza Minnelli, Arthur, 1980. Brand new auteur Steve Gordon knew exactly who was perfect. Dudley Moore as the titular rich drunk man-child and Minnelli as his lady. Orion Pictures also considered Farrow, Farrah Fawcett, Carrie Fisher, Goldie Hawn, Barbara Hershey, Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Kay Lenz (1972’s Breezy, already looking for a comeback), Bette Midler, Gilda Radner, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd… and even Meryl Streep, Debra Winger. Plus Tuesday Weld – in the throes of divorcing the titular Dud. Gordon made a big hit, but never a second film – he died at 44 in 1982.
Jessica Lange, Frances, 1982. Howard Hawks said she always seemed to be shining. “More talent than anyone I ever worked with.” She and Vivien Leigh were beaten by Ingrid Bergman to For Whom The Bell Tolls, 1943 She’s the subject of various books, plays (viz Sally Clarke’s Saint Frances of Hollywood), pop and rock songs – French-Canadian singer Mylène Farmer even took her name. All actresses loved her talent and guts (when wrongfully committed to asylums by her parents) and 23 wanted to be… Frances Farmer. From the sublime to the ridiculous: Meryl Streep, to Susan Dey of TV’s Partridge Family. Kim Basinger tested with Sam Shepard (Lange’s husband). Undaunted Susan Blakely made her own 1983 TVersion (from Farmer’s book, Will There Really Be A Morning?). Plus Anne Archer, Ann-Margret, Blythe Danner, Patty Duke, Mia Farrow, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Glenda Jackson, Diane Keaton, Liza Minnelli, Michelle Phillips, Katharine Ross, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd, Sissy Spacek, Tuesday Weld, Natalie Wood. Plus Constance Money, who met with producer Mel Brooks and debuting director Graeme Clifford. They liked her. Not her CV. Seven porno films in three years. Even if they used her real name (Sue Jensen), someone would have blown an expensive whistle about her hardcore career.
Linda Hamilton, The Terminator, 1983.
In all, 55 actresses were considered, seen or tested for Sarah Connor (aged18; Linda was 27) opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger. James Cameron auteured Sarah for Bridget Fonda. She passed; so did Tatum O’Neal. He decided to go older… and Glenn Close won – her schedule didn’t agree. OK, Kate Capshaw! No, she was tied to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – and Kathleen Turner was Romancing The Stone. Debra Winger won her audition, said yes… then no. The other 48 ladies were The ’80s Group: Farrow, Rosanna Arquette, Kim Basinger, Christy Brinkley, Colleen Camp, Jamie Lee Curtis, Geena Davis, Judy Davis, Carrie Fisher, Jodie Foster, Teri Garr, Jennifer Grey, Melanie Griffith, Darryl Hannah, Barbara Hershey, Anjelica Huston, Amy Irving, Diane Keaton, Margot Kidder, Diane Lane, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kay Lenz, Heather Locklear, Lori Loughlin, Kelly McGillis, Kristy McNichol, Michelle Pfeiffer, Deborah Raffin, Meg Ryan, Susan Sarandon, Ally Sheedy, Cybill Shepherd, Brooke Shields, Sissy Spacek, Sharon Stone, Lea Thompson, Sigourney Weaver… one aerobics queen, Bess Motta (she became Sarah’s room-mate, Ginger Ventura), two singers, (Madonna, Liza Minnelli), two Brits (Miranda Richardson, Jane Seymour), five essentially funny girls, Goldie Hawn, Rhea Perlman (Mrs Danny De Vito), Gilda Radner, Mary Tyler Moore…plus the new MTM, Julia Louis-Dreyfus from just Saturday Night Live. Most were in contention again a few years later for Fatal Attraction (won by Close) and The Accused (going to Foster and McGillis). Ten years later (after T2), Linda gave birth to Cameron’s daughter and Josephine’s parents wed in 1997… for two years.
Gena Rowlands, Another Woman, 1987. Being pregnant with Woody Allen’s only biological child meant Mia had to swop roles with Gena for his best slice of Bergmania – achieving his dream of working with his idol Ingmar Bergman’s brilliant cinematographer Sven Nykvist.
Glenn Close, Fatal Attraction, 1987.
Kelly McGillis, The Accused, 1988. Paramount suits saw 40 young actresses for the (real life) gang rape victim.Or,their own rape bait fantasies… such as 16-year-old Alyssa Milano! And a further 28 for her defence attorney. Including the Fatal Attraction also-rans (from Farrow to Debra Winger, by way of Diane Keaton and, naturally, Meryl Streep) plus Blythe Danner, Sally Field, Terri Garr, Mary Gross, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver, Dianne Wiest. A 1982 rape victim herself, McGillis refused Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning role – but asked to play her lawyer.
Geena Davis, Thelma & Louise, 1990.
Diane Keaton,Manhattan Murder Mystery, 1993.

“I’m sorry not to be in your next film.” Of course she was. Reportedly, she still turned up for a costume fitting! . Of course, she did! Woody Allen had single-handedly rescued Farrow’s career. No other US actress had such an important auteur in her thrall, resulting in 13 successive movies during their 1980-1992 romance. However, now she uncovered naked polaroids of her adopted daughter at Woody’s place… “IT’S WAR!” screamed New York tabloids as the affair of Mia and Woody exploded in mud-slinging following her woman-scorned discovery that he was having an affair with her daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. Or as Republican senator Newt Gingrich put it: “Woody Allen is not having incest with his non-daughter for whom he has been a non-father because they have a non-family.” As if his affair was not bad enough, Mia started making outlandish spurned-woman suggestions, losing all credibility with the public, media and Diane Keaton rushed to the film’s rescue – in praiseworthy solidarity. And only iscorrect in that the film is based onis the hour murder mystery section cut from their greatest partnership, Annie Hall, 1977. “It was crazy,” said Keaton. “Outside, the Press circled Woody’s trailer. A day didn’t go by without microphones in his face. Inside it felt like Annie Hall days, only looser, if that was possible. Entire scenes were completed in one take. We were in make-up at 7am and wrapped at 2.30pm, I couldn’t believe how easy it was. As for Woody, he never brought up his personal problems while working.”
Kate Nelligan, Wolf, 1994. Just not the right time to book Mia – as she began to trash Woody Allen; even accusing him of sexually molesting their youngest infant. She quit as she didn’t want to be any problem for director Mike Nichols, who had fought the studio for her.
Natasha Richardson, Widows’ Peak, 1994. She took over the role penned by Hugh Leonard for her mother, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Natasha took the role created for Mia.
Helena Bonham Carter, Mighty Aphropdite, 1994. A 14th film together? Even after the angst o fLa Scandale, Woody Allen could think of no one better than Mia to play his wife, Amanda, who wanted to do what Mia did: adopt lots of babies. Woody’s incredulous casting director Juliet Taylor shouted: “What are you – nuts?”
Isabella Rossellini, Heights, 2004. Fortunately, stage work cancelled Farrow’s availability to play… a Vanity Fair editor!!
Diane Wiest, Dedication, 2007. A late change of parents for children’s book illustrator Mandy Moore as Mia and Bob Balaban churned into Dianne and Tom Wilkinson.

Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 33