Big movie roles often come with a list of actors who didn’t get the part.
It’s hard to picture Titanic without Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack and Kate Winslet as Rose.
But before DiCaprio was chosen, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise, and Johnny Depp were all considered for the role.
Sometimes actors choose to turn down a big role and later regret it. Other times, things just don’t work out, even for the best actors.
Here are 13 famous moments when well-known actors were rejected from major films.
Emma Stone
The La La Land star said that she auditioned for the main role in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
She told Timothée Chalamet in an actor-on-actor interview for Variety: “Oh, my God, when I auditioned for Alice in Wonderland… not getting a Tim Burton movie is really devastating.”
The role went to Mia Wasikowska, an Australian actor.
Timothée Chalamet
In the same interview, Call Me By Your Name star Chalamet told Stone that he auditioned for a part in Spider-Man.
“I went up for all these things, and tested for Spider-Man, and I didn’t get it, and a Tim Burton movie, too, and these things weren’t happening,” he said.
Chalamet has since landed a role in an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, playing an early version of inventor Willy Wonka. Burton previously directed Johnny Depp in the role for his 2005 film.
Ben Stiller
In August 2022, Ben Stiller shared that he had tried but failed to get a role in the popular 1990s comedy My Cousin Vinny.
“I tanked my audition for My Cousin Vinny. It still haunts me to this day,” the actor said during a Q&A.
While he didn’t say which role he was up for, fans believe he was considered for the part of Billy Gambini, which eventually went to Ralph Macchio.
Jake Gyllenhaal
The Brokeback Mountain actor remembered failing an audition for The Lord of the Rings.
“I remember going to this room. There was a lot of stage directions and no lines… It was just like finding the ring… and I remember I didn’t really do it because I didn’t really understand because there were no lines,” Gyllenhaal told Jimmy Fallon.
“So I sort of walked up, and opened [a box] up and I was like ‘Is that good?’ Literally Peter Jackson was like *face palm*.”
Taylor Lautner
Before the Jonas Brothers got their roles in Disney’s Camp Rock, a different 2000s teen heartthrob was considered for the part. “Taylor Lautner did audition, and we liked him a lot,” director Matthew Diamond told Insider. “I think we kind of said he wasn’t exactly right for the part.”
The director said they could “tell how talented he was” but he wasn’t “quite Shane Gray enough.”
“I remember thinking he’s really good-looking and quite charismatic,” Diamond added.
Even though Lautner didn’t star in the Disney movie, he got the famous role of Jacob Black in the Twilight franchise, which came out the same year. The role of Shane Gray went to Joe Jonas, who starred with his brothers Nick and Kevin.
Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe once failed an audition for the 1997 romantic comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding – at least according to the film’s director.
Filmmaker PJ Hogan shared in an interview with Vulture that his first choice for the male lead had been Crowe, who he thought was “probably the most amazing actor I had ever encountered.”
To cast Crowe in the film, he needed Julia Roberts’s approval, so he invited the Gladiator star to a table read.
“I don’t know what went wrong,” Hogan said. “It was one of the worst table reads I’ve ever experienced. Russell was seated opposite Julia. He gripped that script, and he stared at that script, and he didn’t look at her once.”
“He read every line in a monotone. At one point, Julia was literally leaning over the table, staring, like, inches from Russell’s face, trying to make eye contact. And he wouldn’t look at her.”
Hogan added: “At the end of the reading, Russell came up to me and said, ‘I thought that went pretty well.’ And then I knew: Russell was not going to be in My Best Friend’s Wedding.”
The role eventually went to Dermot Mulroney.
Matthew McConaughey
The Interstellar actor auditioned for Titanic and was really happy with how it went.
“The audition went really well. Well enough where, when I was left, I was being slapped on the back … well enough where you go outside and call your agent and say ‘Oh, I nailed it,'” McConaughey said on a 2019 episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.
“And there was a rumour that I got the role and didn’t do it… This is false,” he added. Despite McConaughey’s feelings about the audition, Leonardo DiCaprio got the iconic role, and both actors would likely agree their careers turned out just fine.
Chris Klein
In an audition tape that surfaced years later, American Pie star Chris Klein auditioned for one of the main roles in the hit ABBA musical Mamma Mia!
In the tape, Klein is heard singing “Lay All Your Love On Me” while trying out for the role of Sky, Sophie’s lover. The role eventually went to Dominic Cooper.
John Krasinski
“My agent called and said, ‘They’re going to go with Chris Evans,'” Krasinski told Variety about losing the role of Captain America in 2011.
“And I remember I said, ‘Yeah, look at him. He’s Captain America.'”
In an interview on The Ellen Show, Krasinski explained further: “This is a true story. I was putting the suit on, and the [costume] guy was like, ‘This is really momentous.’ And I said, ‘Yes.'”
Reece Witherspoon
There were many people who tried out for the role of Cher Horowitz in Clueless, including Angelina Jolie, who sent in an audition tape.
“I met with Reese [Witherspoon] because everyone said, ‘This girl’s amazing. She’s going to be huge,'” said Clueless director and writer Amy Heckerling.
“I saw some movie where she [Witherspoon] had a southern accent. Maybe it was on TV, a movie of the week. But I did see some scenes of hers and went: Wow. She’s amazing. But Alicia [Silverstone] is Cher,” she told Vanity Fair.
Alicia Silverstone went on to win Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture for her role in Clueless at the 1996 Academy Awards.
Tom Holland
He may have beaten Chalamet to the Spider-Man role, but Tom Holland has his own casting story.
The actor auditioned but didn’t get the part in 2015’s record-breaking sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
“I was like four or five auditions in, and I think I was auditioning for John Boyega’s role,” he said.
“I remember doing this scene with this lady, bless her, and she was just a drone. So I was doing all of this like, ‘We gotta get back to the ship!’ and she was just going, ‘Bleep, bloop, bloop, bleep bloop.’
“I just couldn’t stop laughing. I found it so funny. And I felt really bad because she was trying really hard to be a convincing android or drone or whatever they’re called.”
The Avengers star added: “Yeah, I obviously didn’t get the part. That wasn’t my best moment.”
