“I Wanted That”: Jennifer Lawrence 11 Actors Who Lost Out on Parts They Fought For
Even A-list actors like Jennifer Lawrence, Dwayne Johnson, and Meryl Streep don’t always get the roles they desire.
Acting, as a career, is rife with rejection—even for Hollywood’s elite. For every function that an actor takes place to e-book, there are dozens of hopefuls gunning for the component. And sometimes, dropping out on the part stings. Just ask Amanda Seyfried, who these days discovered that she auditioned to play Glinda inside the two-part Wicked film even as filming her Emmy-nominated turn as Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout.
“Last summer time while I turned into playing Elizabeth, at the weekends I become auditioning in character to play Glinda within the movie version of Wicked,” Seyfried told Backstage, sharing simply how badly she wanted to play the part that in the long run went to pop star Ariana Grande. “Because I wanted it that lots that I turned into like, You understand what? Yeah, I should play the closing scene of The Dropout on Tuesday. I’ll provide my Sunday to you. I literally bent over backwards while playing the hardest position of my lifestyles.”
Seyfried is not the handiest actor to specific unhappiness after getting handed over for a plum position. Jessica Biel discussed her dismay over auditioning for The Notebook even as protected in blood (she become filming Texas Chainsaw Massacre at the time) and losing the component to Rachel McAdams. In an alternate universe, Matthew McConaughey is protecting Gwyneth Paltrow at the bow of a ship on the poster for Titanic. “I wanted that. I auditioned with Kate Winslet,” McConaughey stated on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast. “Walked faraway from there pretty confident that I had it. I didn’t get it. I in no way got offered that.” Here’s an casual list of greater stars who laid all of it on the road for a role that ultimately went to someone else.
LIZZO
The Special singer has made it very clean that she desired to play Ursula in Disney’s forthcoming stay-movement Little Mermaid movie. She even tweeted a video of herself singing “Poor Unfortunate Souls” while included in purple makeup and wearing white hair, tagging Disney inside the caption, “I’M URSULA. PERIOD.” The video went viral and inspired a web campaign to help her nab the role. Alas, the a part of the depraved sea witch went to Melissa McCarthy, which is probably for the nice—Lizzo doesn’t want to scouse borrow Ariel’s voice to win hearts.
COURTNEY LOVE
Can you consider the frontwoman of Hole making a song “Elephant Love Medley”? Well, according to Courtney Love, it can have befell. Love informed Contributor magazine that once earning a Golden Globe nomination for The People vs. Larry Flint, she become in consideration for a bevy of film roles, inclusive of Janis Joplin and Lisa in Girl, Interrupted—the element that in the long run gained Angelina Jolie an Oscar. But “the one that were given away, which I am nonetheless no longer completely over, is Moulin Rouge!” stated Love. “Baz [Luhrmann] idea I became a tremendous illustration of tragedy, and I notion I may want to intertwine that with comedy, which might have been ideal for the position.” Hard to argue with that logic.
BETTE DAVIS
There are a few roles that everybody wants. Before the Madonna boot camp, there was the cutthroat opposition to play Scarlett O’Hara—which noticed luminaries of Hollywood’s yesteryear, along with Bette Davis, Norma Shearer, and Katharine Hepburn, vying to superstar in Gone With the Wind. In the Atlantic article “The Making of Gone With the Wind (Part 1),” Gavin Lambert information the painstaking process of landing on Vivien Leigh for the position of Scarlett. Of all the would-be Scarletts, it seems Davis took dropping the position the hardest. She reportedly waged an “ardent marketing campaign” for Scarlett, had an “inconsolable preference for the component,” and “the loss of the function haunted her for years.”
DWAYNE JOHNSON
Even one of the highest-earning Hollywood actors loses out on a position every every so often. Dwayne Johnson has shared that early in his movie-appearing profession, he was up for the function of Jack Reacher in the Paramount Pictures movie edition of Lee Child’s ebook series. In the novels, Reacher is defined as six feet five and 250 pounds, similar in percentage to Johnson. However, Johnson ended up losing the function to none other than Tom Cruise, who is lots towards 5 feet six than six ft 5. “Tom was the most important movie celebrity in the international, and I changed into now not,” said Johnson in a Facebook interview session years later. “I got the call announcing, ‘Hey, you didn’t get the position.’ Look, I didn’t even realize if I had a shot for it, however the people around me at that time made me think that I did. I felt like I did. I felt like, Why not me?” Clearly, size isn’t the entirety.
NICOLE KIDMAN
Nicole Kidman wanted to be a lady, standing in the front of a boy, asking him to love her. In a conversation with Hugh Grant for Marie Claire, Kidman revealed that she wanted to superstar opposite Grant as Anna Scott inside the 1999 romantic comedy Notting Hill, however misplaced out on the function to Julia Roberts. “I certainly wanted the role that Julia Roberts performed in Notting Hill.… Yeah, I did,” Kidman stated. “But I wasn’t widely known sufficient, and I wasn’t talented enough.” Nicole Kidman? Not proficient enough? Likely story.
OPRAH
While selling A Wrinkle in Time in 2018, Oprah become stopped at the streets of NYC and requested if there has been ever a position she didn’t get that she regretted. “Yeah: Doubt,” she said. “I wanted to be in Doubt. I suggest, it’s amazing ’motive Viola [Davis] got it—it’s wonderful. But the director advised me no because it wasn’t lengthy enough to lose ‘the Oprah thing.’” Indeed, Davis’s person wound up having less than 11 mins of screen time (which changed into nevertheless sufficient for her to earn an Oscar nomination). Not every movie can cope with the Oprah thing.
JENNIFER LAWRENCE
Jennifer Lawrence would possibly have taken domestic $25 million for Don’t Look Up, but that doesn’t mean that she’s gotten each function she’s long past after. While appearing on The Howard Stern Show, Lawrence revealed that she turned into “devastated” when she misplaced out at the starring function in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Alice was in the long run performed through Mia Wasikowska, who Lawrence stated “was ideal and remarkable.” Besides, Lawrence stated she couldn’t do a British accent—so perhaps it’s for the best that she didn’t move down Burton’s rabbit hole.
GLEN POWELL
Sometimes the position you’re meant to play isn’t the one you first of all auditioned for. In 2018, Glen Powell took to Twitter to lament losing the leading position of Goose’s son, Rooster, to Miles Teller in Top Gun: Maverick. “I’m taking down all of the Tom Cruise posters in my bedroom,” Powell tweeted, sharing a piece of writing approximately Teller’s casting. “Maybe, I’ll go away one. Two for symmetry. Okay, the posters are staying.” Powell became clever to leave up all those posters—he sooner or later changed into forged as Hangman in the billion-greenback flick and, according to a few, stole the film.
KEKE PALMER
Although the net can’t get sufficient of Keke P, Palmer has every now and then been instructed Nope by means of casting directors. Palmer advised Glamour that she changed into bummed to lose out on a role in Ice Cube’s 2005 street journey comedy, Are We There Yet?, as the element went to Aleisha Allen. “I keep in mind being so sad I didn’t get it,” she told Glamour. “But once I appearance again on it, I wasn’t ready.” Palmer was prepared to act contrary the rapper became actor only a few years later, whilst she starred in 2008’s The Longshots.
KALEY CUOCO
The Flight Attendant megastar became extremely confident that she had booked a role in the buzzy Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. “I turned into convinced [the part was mine].… I was so convinced that my luggage had been packed for Greece,” Cuoco instructed Glamour. “And then I didn’t get it. I changed into so devastated. And I’m not [normally] devastated over roles.” The part in the end went to Kate Hudson. “I cried and I cried all night lengthy,” Cuoco said of her response to dropping the component. As the announcing goes, it’s better to have auditioned and misplaced than to have in no way auditioned in any respect.
MERYL STREEP
Yes, even the performing GOAT, Meryl Streep, has skilled roles no longer going her manner. The three-time Oscar winner as soon as told People that she wanted to play u . S . Singer Patsy Cline in the biopic Sweet Dreams, directed by using her pal Karel Reisz. “Karel became a pal of mine who I loved, and he become making a film about Patsy Cline, who’s a singer I loved,” she said. When the role ultimately went to a one of a kind blonde, Oscar-winning actor, Jessica Lange, Streep changed into capable of parlay her loss of a film role into free housing whilst she become capturing Plenty in England close to Reisz’s home. “I instructed him, ‘Well, the least you can do is permit me stay at your house even as I am there,’” she stated. “He did, and it was a stunning house.” Streep in no way loses.