- Cole Hauser, Dazed and Confused, 1993. Replaced by writer-director Richard Linklater because Vince looked too much like co-star Ben Affleck. (Not anymore). The film remains a rarity as “man” is said more often than “fuck” – 203 to 59 times.
- Matthew Perry, Friends, TV, 1994-2004. Among thoses hort-listed for Chandler Bing was a future lover ofthe series’ breakout star, Jennifer Anniston (August 2005-November 2006),
- Matt Dillon, There’s Something About Mary, 1998. Fox wanted Bill Murray as the sleazy private dick Pat Healy, latest in a long line smitten with the gorgeous Cameron Diaz. The brothers Farrellly rightly said he was too old and suggested Azaria, Cuba Gooding Jr or Vince Vaughn. Easiest role for Dillon. He was Cameron’s lover at the time.
- Matt Damon, The Talented Mr Ripley, 1998. The newest hot UK scenarist-director Anthony Minghella, hot off The English Patient, checked all the new young turks.. for his Plein soleil re-make.
- Diedrich Bader, Office Space, 1998. Vaughn and Owen Wilson (as alike as cottage and cheese) audtioned forthe neighbour of the hero Ron Livingston. The film’s auteur Mike Judge was father of MTV’s Beavis & Butthead toons, just as Office Space fathered Horrible Bosses, 2010. Jennifer Aniston midwifed both sharp satires.
- James Marsden, X-Men quartet, 1999-2013. “Mutation: it is the key to our evolution.” Producer James Cameron and his then wife, director Kathryn Bigelow, chose Michael Biehn for Scott Summers/Cyclops in the early 90s – and never made the film! James Caviezel won this version before prefering to be Dennis Quaid’s son in Frequency. (Nobody’s perfect). To be free for Cyclops, Marsden shut the door on Soul Survivors and slipped the key to Casey Affleck – after director Bryan Singer looked at Vaughn, pals Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Ethan Hawke, Thomas Jane (who became Marvel’s The Punisher, in 2003, and opposite Rebecca Romijn, X-Men’s Mystique), Edward Norton (already turned down as Logan/Wolverine), DB Sweeney (he cameoed as a Statue of Liberty guard), Luke Wilson… and Edward Burns, except the last thing a young and opinionated director like Singer wanted on his set was another young and opinionated director.
- Jake Gyllenhaal, Donnie Darko, 2000. Surprised he’d even been asked – four times! – Vaughn passed because, like who wants to play – or watch – a 30-year-old teenager! Troubled or otherwise. After his October Sky breakthrough, Gyllenhaal was frantically running around loads of auditions. He remembered pulling off the road to finish the script by Richard Kelly, 23, just out of film school. “Letting someone else direct was never an option. I knew it would never see the light of day, or be drastically rewritten. Once Drew Barrymore signed on, we got the finance we needed: $4.5m.” Jake said it beautifully captured the experience of moving into adulthood. “This is what my adolescence felt like… although I have never spoken to rabbits.” At the wrap party, Gyllenhaal and Seth Rogen agreed that they had no idea what the movie was about.
- Ben Affleck, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, 2001. For a laugh, New Jersey auteur Kevin Smith asked Vaughn and Jon Favreau to send-up Good Will Hunting – until he got the real stars to do it: Affleck and Matt Damon. (It was Smith who showed their Hunting script to Miramax).
- Val Kilmer, Wonderland, 2003. Kilmer was amazing as John Holmes said the porno legend’s lover Dawn Schiller. “To bring back the essence, or the psyche, as Sharon (Holmes)would call it, of a man long gone… it’s pretty scary.”
- Cole Hauser, Paparazzi, 2004. Eleven years on and Hauser is still pinch-hitting for Vaughn.Vince supplied aa guest cameo. So did the producer: Mel Gibson.
- Owen Wilson, Starsky and Hutch, 2004. In the end, Vaughn was too, er, heavy for a hero, so he madea great villain.
- Freddy Rodriguez, Lady inthe Water, 2005. Among the dream wishes of director M Night Shyamalan for what began as a bedtime story for histwo daughters. Shoulda stayed there!
- Adam Sandler, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, 2006. The Ace Ventura and Bruce Almighty producer Tom Shadyac had this idea brewing since 1999 when the New York firemen pretending to be gay (for tax purposes) were Joe and Benny. Tom went through various couples. Will Smith and Nicolas Cage. No? OK, how about Will Smith and James Gandolfini (wow!). Or even, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Before settling on Adam Sandler and Kevin James – in what Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers trounced as “mealy-mouthed hypocrisy.”
- Matthew Fox, Speed Racer, 2007. Directors kept changing… Mexico’s Alfonso Cuarón, the UK’s Julien Temple, Guys Van Sant. Finally, the Wachowski siblings. So did the choices for Racer X from the Japanese anime series. Cage (in the early 90s), Keanu Reeves, Henry Rollins in 1994 and – ten years on – Vaughn was going to produce and star. They were all lucky. Film flopped.
- Seth Rogen, The Green Hornet, 2010. Some 14 years shot by between George Clooney saying yes and Rogen shedding 30lbs and finding it was not a step-up for Rogenkind. Vaughn was the choice of French director Michel Gondry in 1997. Others trying to be green were George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Wahlberg… and Corey Reynolds or Eddie Murphy for the black Hornet, John Stewart!
- Colin Farrell, Horrible Bosses, 2010. A bald Farrell was almost unrecognisable as the terrible boss – taking over his father Donald Sutherland’s company and making life hell for Jason Sudeikis, in this male take on Nine To Five.
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Tom Cruise, Jack Reacher, 2011.
Some of the names – and heights – up for Lee Child’s craggy ex-military cop-cum-Sherlock-homeless were absurd. Jim Carrey, for example. Jim Carrey! Some 25 others were Nicolas Cage, Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, Cary Elwes, Colin Farrell, Harrison Ford, Jamie Foxx, Mel Gibson, Hugh Wolverine Jackman, Dwayne Johnson (“I look back in gratitude that I didn’t get Jack Reacher”), Avatar’s Stephen Lang, Dolph Lundgren, Edward Norton, Ron (Hellboy) Perlman, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves (he became John Wick x 5), Kurt Russell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Will Smith, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vince Vaughn, Denzel Washington and the battle-fatigued Bruce Willis. Any of them would have been more acceptable than Tom Cruise – with the exception of Carrey, Depp, Elwes, Reeves and, obviously the Euros. Pitt was best of the pack (remember Fight Club?)… although no one even thought of the obvious choice – Liam Neeson! Reacher fans were livid about the 5ft 5ins Cruise daring to be the 6ft 5ins action hero. Reminiscent of Anne Rice’s capitulation over tiny Tom as her “very tall” Lestat in Interview With The Vampire, in 1994, author Lee Child declared: “Reacher’s size is a metaphor for an unstoppable force – which Cruise portrays in his own way.” Ah! But then in 2018, after the sequel, Child changed his tune about his child. (They share the same birthday, October 29). ”Ultimately, the readers are right. The size of Reacher is really, really important and it’s a big component of who he is… So what I’ve decided to do is – there won’t be any more movies with Tom Cruise… We’re re–booting, we’re going to try and find the perfect guy.” And they did with 6ft. 2ins Alan Richtson – Aquaman in Smallville and Hawk in Supergirl and Titans – for the Amazon series. - Bradley Cooper, 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.” Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence Law ruled and made two more films together – Serena,, American Hustle, 2013 – and nearly a fourth: Nightmare Alley, 2020
- Denzel Washington, 2 Guns, 2012. In the early days, it was going to be Vaughn as the DEA guy opposite Owen Wilson’s Navy cop –neither one knew the other was also working undercover. Washington and Mark Wahlberg were an excellent double-act; surprising has D is the bigger talent and Wahlberg is usually more pain than gain in comedy. What helped is that this was Mark’s second trip with his Scorsese – Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur.
- Mark Wahlberg, Daddy’s Home, 2015. First choice for Dusty Mayron had to pass one-fafher-too-many comedy to Wahlberg. He also survived for the similarly useless sequel in 2017 – when the dads had to deal with their fathers. Ho-hum.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 20