Olivia Wilde

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Eva Green, Casino Royale, 2005.
  2. Nikki Reed, Twilight, 2008.     Hit novelist Stephenie Meyer cast the film version her way  – and very well. Including The OC TV star, 2004-05 as Rosalie Hale.
 Then, Hollywood got into  the vampiric franchise… and went younger… to director Catherine Hardwicke’s discovery,  who  wrote their film,  Thirteen, 2003, when she was 14.
  3. Sarah Lind, What Goes Up, 2008.     Nine other actors were in (and out) during the much delayed and budget-slashed mess about a New York journo involved with the youth population of the small home of town of “the first teacher in space”  Christa McAuliffe – when she dies in the 1986 Challenger Shuttle explosion..
  4. Emma Stone, Marmaduke, 2009.     First voice choice for Mazie, the  sexy collie in the doggy toon.

  5. Noomi Rapace, Prometheus, 2011.  This is the first of a must-be-a-record 13 films bypassing Olivie during March-December 2011…  
    Among the season’s usual testees chasing Ridley Scott’s (is it?/it isn’t/Oh yes, it is) Alien prequel – Gemma Arterton, Abbie Cornish, Anne Hathaway, Carey Mulligan, Natalie Portman. The initially cast Charlize Theron switched to Meredith Vickers, instead. Then, Ridley beat all Hollywood to signing The Girl of the Hour – aka Lisbeth Salander, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, in Sweden’s Millennium trilogy.
  6. Sandra Bullock, Gravity, 2011. Once Angelina Jolie passed (twice), they all wanted the 3D sf special written by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron and his son, Jonas – Wilde, Abbie Cornish, Marion Cotillard, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johannsson, Salma Hayek, Blake Lively, Sienna Miller, Carey Mulligan, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts… Because  the female astronaut is alone on-screen for most of the movie. (Sorry about that, George Clooney).
  7. Malin Akerman, Rock of Ages, 2011.  Amy Adams, Anne Hathaway, Gwyneth Paltrow and Olivia Wilde were all in the Constance frame. Akerman won but who noticed? All eyes were on Tom Cruise’s staggering rock star Stacee Jaxx – aka Jim Morrison meets Axel Rose. Alec Baldwin called it a horrible movie. “I only did it to work with Tom.” Well, the audition worked. They stayed together for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, 2014.
  8. Ambyr Childers, The Master, 2011.   This is the first of a must-be-a-rcord 13 films bypassing Olivie during March-December 2011… Here,  the  lovely blonde daytime soap alumna of All My Children (she was Colby Chandler for 139 episodes, 2006-08) beat off such stellar opposition as Olivia,  Jennifer Lawrence, Amanda Seyfried and Emma Stone to become Elizabeth in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s first outing since his 2007  double-Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood. (Olivia and her usual rival Amanda Seyfried made two films  together, Alpha Dog, 2005, and In Time, 2011).  
  9. Blake Lively, Savages, 2011.. When Jennifer Lawrence split for theHunger Games trilogy, Oliver Stone considered Wilde as the girl mixed up with two pot-growing brothers… and kidnapping by a Mexican drug cartel.  
  10. Mila Kunis, Oz: The Great and Powerful, 2011.    Disneyland is no Oz.  Yet having lost a bundle on the depressing Return To Oz, 1984, the Mouse House primed the pump anew for this dangerously titled flop. Disneyland is no Oz.  Yet having lost a bundle on the depressing Return To Oz, 1984, the Mouse House primed the pump anew for this dangerously titled flop. Wilde wisely passed The Wicked Witch of the West to Kunis.

  11. Amy Adams, Man of Steel, 2011.  
  12.  Jennifer Lawrence, The Silver Linings Playbook, 2011.    “If you really want to go back and do an archeological dig,” laughed director David O Russell, ““I wrote it for Vince Vaughn. And Zooey Deschanel.” Then, Jennifer did  a reading on Skype with “an enormous amount of confidence that was beyond her years…  toughness and a sweetness and charisma… I hadn’t seen anything like that.” JLaw won the Oscar for the film.   Her rivals Elizabeth Banks, Kirsten Dunst, Rachel McAdams, Rooney Mara, Andrea Riseborough  had been well and truly Skyped!  
  13.  Carey Mulligan, The Great Gatsby, 2011.    Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s hunt for Daisy in the fourth Gatsby movie since 1926 matched all the season’s other major auditions.As if the only actresses left on planet earth were: Wilde, Jessica Alba, Abbie Cornish, Eva Green, Rebecca Hall,  Anne Hathaway,  Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley, Blake Lively, Rachel McAdams, Natalie Portman, Amanda Seyfried, Michelle Williams. And Mulligan… soon sobbing on a red carpet, after  being  handed a phone. “It was Baz:  Hello  Daisy!”  (Except, sadly,  she wasn’t).
  14. Kelly Reilly, Flight,  2011.   Wilde and the Irish Dominique McElligott were in the running for Nicole in director Robert Zemeckis’ return to live-action movies  after a dozen years in motion capture country. (Wilde, the Washington raised New Yorker,  had ten other  movies released  in 2012, the year she left House, 2007-2012.
  15. Scarlett Johansson, Under The Skin, 2011.  Many of the same faces from  the late 2010 casting season – Gemma Arterton, Jessica Biel, Abbie Cornish, Megan Fox, Eva Green, January Jones, Blake Lively – were up for for the voracious  alien hanging around Glasgow… originally the wife of an alien Brad Pitt, but he couldn’t wait for director Jonathan Glazer to get started on his  “chilling masterpice” (The Guardian).
  16.  Bérénice Mariohe,  Skyfall,  2011.    
  17. Amanda Seyfried, Lovelace, 2011.  As happened for the dark comedy. Butter, Wilde was asked to sub (a pregnant) Kate Hudson.  But this time it was something darker, the biopic of Linda Lovelace, star of Deep Throat, the surprise porno-chic phenomenon attracting millions to screeings – including Hollywood gentry Warren Beatty, Johnny Carson, Sammy Davis Jr, Jack Nicholson, etc. Film centered on Linda (ex-Borman) and her abusive “manager”-husband, Chuck Traynor who, she maintained, forced her into porn – at gunpoint.  On divorcing him, she became an ardent anti-porn crusader. Throat cost peanuts and made a global $600m-plus, probably the most profitable movie ever produced.  Seyfried and Peter Sarsgaard played the couple – killing off a rival biopic, Inferno, planned for Malin Akerman and Matt Dillon.   
    And so, Olivia’s rather amazing year ended…  during which time, it must be pointed out she was busily  locked into three other films f and the House TV series…. where shed played the internist called  Thirteen… matching the  total of the films that got away from her in 2011.

  18. Olga Kurylenko, Oblivion, 2012.  For once, Disney realised it knew diddly-squat about science fiction and let director Joseph Kosinski and his (expensive) scenario go. Well, he made made their Tron: Legacy flop. After losing six top films,  Wilde won Living Through Chemistry, 2012, opposite Sam Rockwell and Jane Fonda.
  19. Emma Stone, The Gangster Squad,  2012.  Among the many damsels aiming to be Grace Faraday in the  40s/50s LAPD v Mafia drama: Camilla Belle, Lily Collins, Maggie Grace, Ashley Greene, Aly Michalka, Teresa Palmer, Emily Rossum.
  20. Rooney Mara,  Side Effects, 2012.  “My last film,” said Steven Soderbergh. Hardly surprising when he wasn’t allowed to  select his own leading lady!  Despite his track record, his producers refused his Blake Lively choice – like Lindsay Lohan before her. He searched on through Wilde, Emily Blunt, Alice Eve, Imogen Poots, Amanda Seyfried  and Michelle Williams  before the suits  agreed on Rooney. She quit Zero Dark Thirty, 2011, to take over as Emily. Wilde and Mara co-starred in Spike Jonze’s Her that year  Wilde and Mara co-starred in Spike Jonze’s Her that year. And, happily, Soderbergh returned to directing for the cinema with Logan Lucky, 2017.

  21. Lindsay Lohan, Liz & Dick, TV, 2012.    Olivia  was  a good choice and in early talks about playing Elizabeth Taylor’s turbulent love life with her (twice) husband, Richard Burton. So was Megan Fox. The Lifetime production went a cheaper route with the media’s favourite headline – “more memorable in the tabloids than she ever was as an actress,” said Tim Goodman in  Hollywood Reporter. “Woeful as Taylor from start to finish. But, whatever you do, don’t miss Liz & Dick. It’s an instant classic of unintentional hilarity.”  (Natalie Portman had been named for Liz in a never made Martin Scorsese version of the book, Furious Love).
  22.  Isla Fisher,  Now You See Me, 2012.    And now you don’t… Change of Henley for French realisateurLouis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans) as the FBI and Interpol try to snare some – here’s a first – illusionist bank robbers!
  23. Zoe Saldana, Guards of the Galaxy, 2013.   The most Lucasian of the Marvel films…  Gina Carano, Rachel Nichols and the ex-Wonder Woman  Adrienne Palicki also passed on the  green woman… ? No, said Wilde, she’d had enough of fantasy… “People thought I could only play the badass, so I’d always get those roles. It just doesn’t feel very human… I got cast as a computer program in Tron: Legacy and an alien in Cowboys and Aliens. I was, like: There‘s something wrong here.“ But mumblecoremeister Joe Swanberg’s wholly improvised Drinking Buddies broke her through in 2013. “It only took me 12 years!”
  24. Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl, 2013.   Emily Blunt, Abbie Cornish, Julianne  Hough, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon were also discussed for Amy, who goes missing on her wedding anniversary. But a great Briton  won…  
  25.  Jennifer Aniston, She’s Funny That Way, 2013.   For his first movie in a dozen years, director Peter Bogdanovich rescued his long dropped ‘90s screwball comedy called Squirrels to the Nuts (a Lubitsch line from Cluny Brown, 1945), he selected Poots  for Jane, the shrink of hooker-turned-actress  played by Imogen Poots.
  26. Brit  Marling The Keeping Room, 2013.   Change of Augusta among the three Southern women defending home – and selves – from rogue soldiers at the end of the  American Civil War.
  27. Brie Larson, Free Fire, 2015.    Justine changed actors, attitude and styles – she was respun for Larson, as her fisrt outing since winning the Best Actress Oscar for Room.  Except she didn’t know that when accepting this tedious Reservoir Dogs wannabe.
  28.  Margot Robbie, Suicide Squad, 2015.    Warners first offered DC’s Harley Quinn to  Emma Roberts – more keen on heading TV’s Scream Queens. Big mistake.  Also up for  three hours a day in make-up for Quinn: Wilde, Alison Brie, Emily Browning, Lily Collins, Zooey Deschanel, Rooney Mara, Sara Paxton, Imogen Poots, Amanda Seyfried, Olivia Thirlby, Emma Watson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Evan Rachel Wood. “There’s always two characters: Harleen Quinzel and Harley Quinn,” explained Robbie.  “Where Harleen takes over, she can be rational; then Harley takes over, and that’s the more erratic. She loves causing mayhem and destruction. She’s incredibly devoted to the Joker. They have a dysfunctional relationship, but she loves him anyway. She used to be a gymnast – that’s her skill set when fighting.”
  29. Alicia Vikander, Tomb Raider, 2017.    Lara Croft is the girls’ James Bond.  Many tried to succeed Angelina Jolie  from her 2000 version – she won it from  20 candidates.  Two dozen lost to the Swedish Vikander, on a roll with her 2016 Danish Girl  Oscar and Ex Machina robot… The Franchise Brigade was represented by two from the Percy Jackson flicks (Alexandra Daddario, Rosario Dawson), two Terminators (Emilia Clarke, Summer Glau), two Underworlders (Kate Beckinsale, Rhona Mitra) and three Twilighters (Ashley Greene, Nikki Reed and Kristen Stewart who simply refused). Plus 007’s Gemma Arterton, Harry Potter’s Emma Watson,  Marvel’s Wanda Maximioff (Elizabeth Olsen), Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley, Transformers’ Megan Fox, TRON’s Olivia Wilde, X Men’s Jennifer Lawrence,  Other also-rans were: Jessica Biel (as perfect as Dawson), Emily Blunt, Emily Browning, Cara Delevingne (Vikander’s co-star in Tulip Fever, 2017), Nina Dobrev, Anne Hathaway, Sienna Miller (too mild, surely), Saoirse Ronan and Moon’s Kaya Scodelario.

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 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  30