8 Iconic Movie Roles That Were Almost Played by Someone Else

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas wanted Tom Selleck first, and they got him — he was cast as Indiana Jones before Harrison Ford ever entered the picture. Then his TV pilot for Magnum, P.I. got picked up, and the contract he’d signed left him no way out.

Here’s the twist that must still sting a little: an actors’ strike delayed Magnum that year, and Selleck later worked out he’d have had time to shoot Raiders after all. Ford stepped in, and the hat and whip have belonged to him ever since.

The Wachowskis offered Will Smith the role of Neo in the late ’90s. He didn’t get the pitch — by his own account, he couldn’t picture what they were describing — so he passed and made Wild Wild West instead. That one did not go well.

Keanu Reeves got the part, The Matrix became a phenomenon, and Smith has been refreshingly honest about the whole thing. He’s said he probably would have messed it up anyway, and that the movie belonged to Keanu.

Before there was a single James Bond on screen, producer Cubby Broccoli wanted Cary Grant — a personal friend who’d been best man at his wedding. Grant was open to it, but he only wanted to commit to one film. He was 58, and the idea of signing up for a whole run of them didn’t appeal.

The producers were already thinking in terms of a franchise, so they moved on. A relatively unknown Sean Connery got the role, defined 007 for a generation, and the rest became the longest-running spy series in movie history.

John Travolta has said outright that he turned down Forrest Gump — he chose Pulp Fiction instead, which, to be fair, resurrected his career overnight. So it’s not as if he made the wrong call for himself.

Still, he’s called passing on Gump a “tremendous mistake” in hindsight. Tom Hanks took the role, won his second straight Best Actor Oscar, and gave us a character so beloved it’s hard to imagine anyone else on that bus-stop bench.

Sean Connery was offered Gandalf, reportedly with a deal that included around 15 percent of the box office. Given how much the trilogy went on to earn, that share would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

His reason for saying no is one of the great honest quotes in Hollywood: “I read the book. I read the script. I saw the movie. I still don’t understand it.” Ian McKellen took the role and earned an Oscar nomination for it — and it’s now impossible to hear “You shall not pass” in any other voice.

In the early days, before Marvel had Disney money behind it, Tom Cruise was in the conversation for Tony Stark. The studio simply couldn’t afford an A-lister of his size, so the deal never came together.

That opened the door for Robert Downey Jr., a risky choice at the time given his past, who turned the character into the cornerstone of the whole Marvel universe. Cruise, for his part, has said he can’t imagine anyone doing it better than Downey.

This one went further than a near-miss. Eric Stoltz was actually cast as Marty McFly and shot the role for more than a month, because Michael J. Fox’s schedule on Family Ties made him unavailable at first.

But the director felt Stoltz’s serious, method approach was missing the comic lightness the movie needed. They made the painful call to replace him, brought in Fox, and reshot most of the film. The gamble paid off spectacularly.

Matthew McConaughey auditioned for Jack Dawson, read scenes with Kate Winslet, and walked out feeling confident the part was his. He wasn’t imagining it — he was a serious contender.

But director James Cameron pushed for Leonardo DiCaprio, even though the studio had doubts about whether the young actor could anchor a giant romance. DiCaprio got the role, Titanic swept the Oscars and the box office, and turned him into one of the biggest stars on the planet.