Surprises

Some Casting Calls considered some pretty unusual actors. Click here to discover who are the famous names behind the professions considered for some memorable acting roles.

Unusual Casting Calls

CHAMPION'S LEAGUE

“Somebody came up and said to my mother: He’s the next Brando. I said: Who’s Brando?’
Well, I’ll tell ya, Al, baby... Brando is the guy who has just rocked Jack Nicholson off the #1 spot for the most bypassed films in a career. New research (weeks of it) dug up three more titles for Marlon. He now tops the League with 171 rejections to Jacko’s 169. Unless you know different.

Marlon Brando – 171
Jack Nicholson – 170
Paul Newman – 158
Cary Grant – 149
Robert De Niro – 138
Tom Cruise – 135
Dustin Hoffman – 125
Sean Connery – 117
Mel Gibson, Al Pacino, Brad Pitt – 113

Al Pacino hit 83 in April. He’s now made now made 69 screen roles (and refused 113 others) and is touring his Masterclass evenings around Europe. He was, apparently, even one helluva actor at school.

Highest Brit remains, as always, Sir Sean at 117… followed by Laurence OIivier, 91; Richard Burton, 88; Peter O’Toole, 75; Peter Sellers and James Mason, 71; Dirk Bogarde, 68; Olivia De Havilland, 58 ; Vivien Leigh, 57 ; Gary Oldman, 56.

Highest lady is Bette Davis, 97; Jodie Foster, 84; Katharine Hepburn, 66; Michelle Pfeiffer, 78; Julie Christie and Meryl Streep, 73; Nicole Kidman, 72; Jane Fonda, 68; Julia Roberts, 67; Audrey Hepburn, 66; Debra Winger, 67.

Younger Brigade: Johnny 108; Julia, 64; Leo, 73; Jim Carrey, 68; Madonna, 62; Natalie Portman, 50; Jennifer Aniston, 28; Jennifer Lawrence, 26.

HE SAID

“I was offered so much money” to play Han Solo – but he turned down “Star Wars” because he didn’t understand it. “I gave Harrison Ford a career, which he has never thanked me for!” – Al Pacino.

“This is the final film in the series, and this is the last time I’ll play the character. I anticipate that it will be the last time that he appears in a film.” And the series? “I won’t be involved in that, if it does come to fruition.” – Harrison bidding farewell to Indy.

“The Movie Critic is my last motion picture, OK?” – Quentin Tarantino. (And no, it’s not about Paulin Kael. “It’s Travis Bickle if he were a film critic." )

“I never help my kids and I never encourage them and I never give them any advice.” – Stellan Skarsgård on his eight kids. Two of ‘em, Alexander (the last Tarzan) and Bill (Mr Pennywise) are up for James Gunn’s Lex Luthor.

“It’s my pension.” – Gary Oldman on Slow Horses.

“I’ve had my 17th comeback, apparently. I didn’t go anywhere… Maybe people stopped calling out of whatever their fear was at the time. But I didn’t go nowhere.” – Johnny Depp.

“I’m making a dark, dark comedy next. Because that’s what life is. It’s a dark, dark comedy.” – Tom Ford, the oh so elegant fashion designer and director of A Single Man, Nocturnal Animals.

“I don’t do well when I don’t have work. I love to work… I love to feel useful. It’s my Jones, I want to be helpful.” – Harrison Ford on not retiring.

“When I first did Batman, I’d never heard of the word franchise.” – Tim Burton.

“I still work out every day, I ride my bike every day and I make movies. I don’t need money. I love everything that I do. There’s no retiring. I’m still on this side of the grass, so I’m happy. My plan is to live forever - and so far, so good!’ – latest Neflixer, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I never set out to break the rules, it just happened that way.” – Rob Lowe.

Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan has a Texas ranch of 270,000 acres, almost the size of Los Angeles. “If someone stands at my front gate and screams through a bullhorn… what a piece of shit I am, I still can’t hear them.”

“Like it or not, J Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. He made the world that we live in – for better or for worse. His story has to be seen to be believed. His story is both dream and nightmare,” – Christopher Nolan on his much awaited Oppenheimer.

“It is true. I'd rather get a hole in one than win an Academy Award.” – golfer Malcolm McDowell.

My brother and I are technologists and futurists. We’re interested in what next.” – Joe (of Joe and Anthony) Russo, makers of the Captain America and Citadel. series.

“I’m really bad at auditions. I’m terrible. I’ve never been good at them. Can’t do ‘em. They’re nothing to do with working. You get some people who are incredible at auditions, and then they show up on set… But thank God, I don’t have to do it any more. Well, maybe I will again.” – Christian Bale.

Q: When Columbia, Pictures asked you to change your name in the mid-60s, what did you suggest?
A: Kurt Affaire…. was the most ludicrous thing I could think of.. And they said the usual thing, “Get the f--- outa here!” – Harrison Ford.

WELCOME

to a unique directory of what you never saw on-screen. 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.

BOND LADY

The Franco-Irish Zena Marshall was there right at the very beginning of the Bondanza in 1962. She was Dr No’s double agent Miss Taro – and Violet Marceau, Lina Margo and the 1961 Miss Jamaica Marguerite LeWars were not. (Marguerite refused to be "wrapped in a towel, lying in a bed, kissing a strange man." She remained fully dressed as the photographer at the Kingston airport, instead). “Taro,” said Zena, ”was this attractive little siren, and at the same time I was the spy, a bad woman.“ She loved the filming, but found it difficult to spit into Sean’s face as per the script. Zena was the original Ms Everything Everywhere All at Once in the British 40s, 50s and 60s - the busiest starlet in town. Opposite Boris Karloff’s Colonel March of Scotland Yard and Patrick McGoohan’s Danger Man on TV, making her film debut with a bit (just like Roger Moore) in Caesar and Cleopatra in 1945, leading to such movies as The Terrornauts and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes. Oh, the 60s - you hadda be there!

SHE SAID

“Do you know that Tom Cruise does all his own Scientology?” – Amy Schumer.

“I don’t miss anything. If I miss sex, I’ve got a drawer full of vibrators.” – Jane Fonda at 85.

“That was an early addition to the storyline because I had a real penchant for streaking in my college years. I kinda took a step away from that, but, in more recent years, I’ve gotten back into it.” – Alison Brie on her nudity in Somebody I Used to Know, directed by her husband Dave Franco.”

“It wasn’t so much me finding the role as it was finding me.” – Lily Gladstone on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

“I’ve been an actress for a long time; I was [put] in situations that I shouldn’t have been in…There still are some sick men, and women sometimes, who will take advantage of the youth… of the passion that we have as an actor, the fact that we depend on the desire of directors, producers.” – Marion Cotillard

“That film stands out as one of the great characters I’ve played. Lou Jean takes a cop hostage to prevent her young son being placed in foster care, She was quite a pistol. And it took me a long time to get her out of my system. I’m a practical person; I just shake it off - my characters don’t live inside of me. But this one did. She was actually quite tragic. But they put me on the poster with a big, huge smile, and it looked like a comedy. It wasn’t.” – Goldie Hawn on Seven Spielberg’s first feature, The Sugarland Express, 1972.

“What I have going for me is I’m a black actress. And I understand how people perceive that. I don’t see it as a hindrance.” – Viola Davis.

“I had a manager at the time who was like, ‘You have an offer to do Naked Gun and a Half II or something and I was like: Yeah, no, I don’t want to do that.’ He was all: You’ll never work again. Who do you think you are?’ And I was like: You’re right. I am nobody. But something tells me I shouldn’t do that.’ And I like those movies, but I didn’t want to have to go home in four years and run my mom’s construction company.” – Charlize Theron.

“I’ve been married three times, but I never wore a wedding dress.” – Jane Fonda.

CCC CLIPS

>> Here’s a fun cast… Heading the crime comedy Riff Raff are – wait for it – Jennifer Coolidge, on leave from The White Lotus, and Brian Cox resurrected from Succession! Plus BET award winner Gabrielle Union and Dustin Hoffman – not seen in anything since the half-way decent Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium in 2007.

>> Action stations… OK so he’s never going to be 007 but Idris Elba will show us what his Bond would be like as his UN agent, Kamara, Donovan Kamara, tackles ”a brilliant criminal mastermind” (sounds familiar?) in Infernus. The shoot starts in October with Idris as star, producer and director. No Bond ever pulled that off!

>> Mr True Detective, himself, Nic Pizzolatto is “developing a reboot” of The Magnificent Seven for Amazon Studio. He’s ridden thisaway afore, writing the 2015 version with Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt playing Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. Badly.

>> The couple that works together…. Monica Bellucci is the latest addition to the Beetlejuice 2 movie. Hardly surprising as Monica and director Tim Burton have been a (surprise) couple for… oh, for months now. She will be Michael Keaton’s wife. (Keaton is rewinding Batman and Beetlejuice in the same year!) Also booked: Tim’s Wednesday, Jenna Ortega, and (welcome back) Winona Ryder as her Mum… who is not called Tuesday.