- Jeff Bridges, The Last Picture Show, 1971.
Bottoms was The New Hot Kid – the word was out on Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. “Before I knew it, I was meeting with Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, Peter Bogdanovich, and Polly Platt… They cast me without an audition. I didn’t identify with Dwayne. I identified with Sonny. Everybody in the movie talked to Sonny. He was the listener. Then Jeff Bridges got the part of Dwayne. We all know his history. He’s made lots of good choices in his career.” Bottoms lost all respect for Bogdanovich during shooting for starting an affair with co-star Cybill Shepherd while his wife, Pollyh Platt, was in hospital having their second daughter.“I threw Peter up against the wall and told him what an asshole he was. He responded by telling me that he was going to destroy my career…” He didn’t. Soon enough, he destroyed his own.
- Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws, 1974. “What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that’s all.” When Jon Voight refused (“I was too picky”), Steven Spielberg considered either of the two footbal heroes of the dying town of Anarene, Texas, in The Last Picture Show – Bottoms and Jeff Bridges. Dreyfuss was Spielberg’s Tracy… until they re-hashed a Tracy hit as Always, 1989, and then, he sure wasn’t.
- Perry King, Mandingo, 1974. Bottoms, Jan-Michael Vincent and the Bridges bros, Beau and Jeff, all wisely refused to play Hammopn Maxwell in what Chicago critic Roger Ebert called a piece of racist manure. “Obscene in its manipulation of human beings and feelings, excruciating to sit through… This is a film I felt soiled by.”
- Al Pacino, Cruising, 1980. Among producer Robert Weiner’s ideas in 1972 – the surname made him do it?
- Joseph Bottoms, Surfacing, Canada, 1981. Quit – on the first day of shooting. His kid brother took over.
- Val Kilmer, The Doors, 1991. Eight directors and six producers tried to find the perfect Jim Morrison – before Oliver Stone succeeded.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 6