Emma Watson - La La Land
Emma Stone won the Oscar for best actress for her role in the musical La La Land (2017), however, to play the role of Mia there was another Emma in the plans.
"There was a moment in production when the actors were going to be Emma Watson and Miles Teller (Whiplash). But things didn't happen so that they were finally the actors," Damien Chazelle, the film's director, explained to the magazine.
According to the media, Watson's demands made the production look for another name to star in the musical that ultimately won several Oscars.
"It's one of those frustrating situations when you get involved in a project when it's just getting started and nothing has been signed off or agreed upon," Watson told reporters.
Mark Wahlberg - The Secret of the Mountain
After donning a plastic penis for the movie Boogie Nights (1997), you might think that nothing would be more challenging for Mark Wahlberg.
However, the American actor admitted that he found the script for the film Brokeback Mountain (The Secret of the Mountain) a "little horrifying", which dealt with the gay relationship of two cowboys.
"The script was very descriptive. I told Ang Lee (the director), who I thought was a great guy, and very talented, that if he wanted to talk to me about the role, I would. But, I must say, I'm grateful that he hasn't done it",
In the end, the role went to Jake Gyllenhaal, who was nominated for an Oscar for this role in 2005.
Sean Connery - Lord of the Rings
"You shall not pass!" Gandalf warned the Balrog monster in the first installment of the "Lord of the Rings" saga. However, the Scottish actor Sean Connery was able to pass and have all the options to play the gray wizard in the well-remembered trilogy.
"I never understood what it was about. I read the book, and I read the script. And then I saw the movie, and I never could understand what it was about," Connery told the Huffington Post.
"It's true that with Connery the movie would have been very different. Gandalf would have been Scottish, to begin with," Ian McKellen, the actor who ultimately landed the role of the famous wizard, told Games Radar.
Christina Applegate - Legally Blonde
The role of Elle Woods in "Legally Blonde" suited Reese Witherspoon so well, it's hard to think she wasn't the first choice to play it.
But that's how it is. Among several names that were taken into account, Christina Applegate stands out, who had become famous in her role as Kelly, a teenager without much of a brain in the series Married with children.
But she turned it down and the role went to Witherspoon, who earned a Golden Globe nomination.
"When I saw the script, the idea of repeating myself on screen scared me, but I think it was a bit of a stupid decision, right?" she told ET.
John Travolta - Forrest Gump
Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to have.
But what few know is what John Travolta could have gotten if he had gotten the role of Forrest Gump instead of Tom Hanks.
Travolta was offered the lead role in the Robert Zemeckis film, but he turned it down to do another film: Pulp Fiction.
Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction ended up with multiple nominations for the 1995 Oscars, which saw Forrest pick up six awards, including best picture.
Warren Beatty - Kill Bill
Quentin Tarantino may have gotten Travolta to act for him in Pulp Fiction, but he never got Warren Beatty to accept the lead role in Kill Bill (2004).
One of the reasons Beatty didn't accept the offer was the amount of time Tarantino was going to be filming in China. In this way, David Carradine became a mentor and the main villain of the film.
"I didn't want to leave my children for so long," he explained to MTV.
"Warren would have been great for the role, but there's no problem with the way things went that time," Tarantino said in a 2004 interview.
Will Smith - The Matrix
Another actor who said no to Quentin Tarantino was Will Smith, who turned down Django in Chains, which opened the door for Jamie Foxx to star.
But Smith had turned down another interesting project: the role of Neo in the remembered "Matrix" from 1999, made by Keanu Reeves.
"I don't think I was right for the role anyway. 'The Matrix' is quite a difficult concept to explain, to lay out. And when I was introduced to it, I just didn't get it," he told Wired magazine in 2004.
"I watched Keanu's performance and I rarely say this, but I would have blown it. At that point in my career, I wasn't smart enough as an actor to make the movie flow."
Smith's wife, Jada, worked with Reeves on the second and third installments of the series.
