Almost Cast: Who Lost Iconic Roles?
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Photograph by Ron Galella/WireImage via LIFE.Would the world be the same if Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw had been played by someone other than Sarah Jessica Parker, or if the role of Terminator had gone to O.J. Simpson? It’s impossible to say but fun to ponder. As part of Slate’s new partnership with LIFE.com, we take a look back at actors who were almost cast in major roles.
Almost Cast as The Terminator: O.J. Simpson
The studio wanted the beloved football legend to play the murderous, time-traveling cyborg in the gritty 1984 classic, but director James Cameron nixed the idea. The reason? He didn't think audiences would find Simpson a believable killer. "I didn't know O.J. Simpson," Cameron said in a 2010 60 Minutes interview. "I didn't know that he was gonna go murder his wife later and become the real Terminator."
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Photograph by Keystone/Getty Images via LIFE.Almost Cast as Princess Leia (Star Wars): Sissy Spacek
Brian DePalma and George Lucas held a joint casting session for the movies each was developing at the time—Carrie and Star Wars, respectively. Spacek and Carrie Fisher both auditioned for both the telekinetic social outcast Carrie White and for spunky space-traveling princess Leia Organa. Here: Spacek with the woman who landed the role, Carrie Fisher, in 1978.
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Photograph by Ron Galella/WireImage via LIFE.com.Landed the Role of Princess Leia: Carrie Fisher
Fisher, daughter of crooner Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds, ultimately nabbed the Princess Leia role—on the condition that she lose 10 pounds.
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Photograph by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images via LIFE.Almost Cast as Mrs. Robinson (The Graduate): Ava Gardner
Director Mike Nichols met with the former screen idol while casting Elaine's predatory but strangely vulnerable mother. “The truth is, you know, I can’t act. I just can’t act! The best have tried," she confessed to Nichols. He backed out on offering her the part.
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Photograph by MGM Studios/Getty Images via LIFE.Landed the Role of Mrs. Robinson: Anne Bancroft
For arguably the pivotal role of the whole movie, Nichols instead turned to Bancroft. Though only 35, she was to play the role of a jaded 45-year-old. She'd been convinced to do it by her husband, Mel Brooks, who loved the script. Hoffman, by the way, was only six years younger than the actress. The movie almost cast Gene Hackman as Mrs. Robinson's cuckolded husband, but that role instead went to Murray Hamilton, perhaps best remembered as the oblivious mayor from Jaws.
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Photograph by John Dominis/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.Almost Cast as Benjamin Braddock (The Graduate): Robert Redford
Redford auditioned for the part of the aimless but lovesick twentysomething after winning kudos for Barefoot in the Park.
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Photograph by MGM Studios/Getty Images via LIFE.Landed the Role of Benjamin Braddock: Dustin Hoffman
Hoffman, an unknown New York stage actor, tried out for the part but had to overcome self-doubt about playing a role written for a WASP. “I just have bad feelings about the whole thing. This is not the part for me," he recalled in a 2008 story about the making of the movie in Vanity Fair. "I’m not supposed to be in movies. I’m supposed to be where I belong—an ethnic actor is supposed to be in ethnic New York, in an ethnic, Off Broadway show! I know my place.”
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Photograph by David Farrell/Getty Images via LIFE.Almost Cast as Vito Corleone (The Godfather): Laurence Olivier
Francis Ford Coppola had two actors in mind for the role of the gentle but deadly don in his genre-defining mobster movie, and one of them was the legendary British actor, according to the documentary about the making of the films, A Look Inside. Olivier's agent, however, flatly turned down the offer, saying that the Shakespearean thespian was likely to die soon and wasn't taking on new work. (He lived for nearly two more decades.)
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Photograph by Tom Wargacki/WireImage via LIFE.Almost Cast as Vito Corleone (The Godfather): Ernest Borgnine
Paramount Pictures insisted that Coppola cast Borgnine as Don Corleone, but Coppola wouldn't relent. Even the name of family-friendly comedian Danny Thomas was floated instead of Coppola's first choice. The studio finally gave up on casting Borgnine when they saw his screen test.
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Photograph by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images via LIFE.Landed the Role of Vito Corleone: Marlon Brando
In the end, the role went to the man Coppola envisioned for it all along—Brando. But the actor, who had a reputation for being difficult on the set, had to take a pay cut.
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Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images via LIFE.Almost Cast as Severus Snape (Harry Potter): Tim Roth
The actor just couldn't juggle the conflicting shooting schedules for Planet of the Apes and Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone. "I would have made [Severus Snape] a very different guy," Roth told MTV in 2007.
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Landed the Role of Severus Snape: Alan Rickman
The role of the evil (or is he?) wizarding professor Severus Snape went to Alan Rickman, previously known best as the sly villain from Die Hard.
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Photograph by Mark Mainz/Getty Images via LIFE.Almost Cast as Harry Potter (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone): Liam Aiken
The then-10-year-old American was director Chris Columbus' choice to play the title role in the beloved film series about an orphan wizard, but the hullabaloo about the fact he wasn't British—Rowling had decreed that only a Brit should play her character—doomed him. He later went on to star in another movie based on a child's book series—Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events. “I think I had this feeling that it wouldn’t work out,” Aiken told New York magazine in 2005. “But it was fine. I hadn’t done much before, and I would have just been Harry Potter from then on.”
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Photograph by Dave Hogan/Getty Images via LIFE.Landed the Role of Harry Potter: Daniel Radcliffe
The lead role—and fame and fortune that went with starring in one of movie history's biggest franchises—instead went to Daniel Radcliffe (bottom), who was born in London.
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Photograph by Granitz/WireImage via LIFE.Almost Cast as Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City): Dana Delany
In a 2008 Guardian U.K. interview, the former China Beach star revealed that she turned down the part of sex-talkin' gal-about-town Carrie Bradshaw because audiences had hated how she'd ditched her good-girl image in a previous movie. "I said, 'Darren [Star, the creator of SATC], I can’t talk about sex again on screen or people will just lynch me!' .... [A]udiences had a certain image of me as Colleen [her China Beach character] and didn’t want to see it change."
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Photograph by Mike Marsland/WireImage via LIFE.Landed the Role of Carrie Bradshaw: Sarah Jessica Parker
Parker went on to make the Manhattan fashionista such a popular character that Manolo Blahnik even named a shoe after her—the SJP.
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Photograph by SGranitz/WireImage via LIFE.Almost Cast as George Costanza (Seinfeld): Paul Shaffer
In his 2009 autobiography, David Letterman's musical sidekick revealed that Jerry Seinfeld offered him the role of his namesake character's best friend and neurotic counterpart. "There's no audition," Seinfeld said. "You've got the part. Just call us back!" Shaffer never did.
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Photograph by Scott Flynn/AFP/Getty Images via LIFE.Landed the Role of George Costanza: Jason Alexander
The role eventually went to Alexander (far right), whose initial performance, a watered-down Woody Allen impression, morphed into an over-the-top impersonation of the show's doubt-riddled co-creator, Larry David.
Who almost stole the role of Jack Torrance in The Shining from Jack Nicholson? Which Leonardo DiCaprio role almost went to Will Smith? How might Back to the Future have been different? Find out in the full casting gallery on LIFE.com.
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Who almost stole the role of Jack Torrance in The Shining from Jack Nicholson? Which Leonardo DiCaprio role almost went to Will Smith? How might Back to the Future have been different? Find out in the full casting gallery on LIFE.com.