Every Major Movie Role Brad Pitt Turned Down

Every Major Movie Role Brad Pitt Turned Down

Brad Pitt passed on the chance to appear in several noteworthy films released in the 1990s and 2000s. Here’s every major movie role he turned down.

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Here’s every major movie role Brad Pitt passed on. It’s often been said Pitt is a character actor trapped in the body of a conventional Hollywood star. This is particularly evident when you look back at his most fondly-remembered films of the ’90s. Whereas Legend of the Fall and Seven Years in Tibet cast Pitt as their swoon-worthy leads, they were otherwise shrugged off by critics for being handsome, yet stodgy, highbrow dramas. Instead, whenever cinephiles talk about his best roles from that decade, the conversation inevitably turns to the messy or flat-out unhinged characters he played in movies like 12 Monkeys or his early collaborations with David Fincher on Se7en and Fight Club.

By the time the 2000s rolled around, Pitt grew comfortable oscillating between blockbusters and more prestigious fare, yet often worked with directors (like Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen Brothers) who gave him room to tap into the quirkier aspects of his characters. As the age of the A-lister faded away near the end of the decade, and intellectual properties came to define tentpoles more than the people starring in them, the actor began to step away from straightforward blockbusters entirely, in favor of more character-driven films. This was also when Pitt started to find his rhythm as a producer, eventually lending his name to movies by Black auteurs like Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins, and Steve McQueen during the 2010s.

In 2016, Pitt’s professional work was overshadowed by his highly-publicized divorce with Angelina Jolie, much like the Mr. and Mrs. Smith costars’ relationship dominated headlines back when they first got together in the mid-’00s. He’s since taken control of the narrative by speaking publicly about his drug abuse issues and joining an Alcoholics Anonymous recovery group, culminating with his Oscar victory for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood this year. So, as we head into the new decade, we’re taking a look back at the film roles Pitt has turned down in the past.

The Shawshank Redemption

Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption may be regarded as one of the best Stephen King movie adaptations of all time nowadays, but it disappointed commercially upon its initial release in 1994, and was shut-out of the subsequent Oscars ceremony despite being nominated in seven different categories. On top of that, the film’s casting process was a bit of a headache, with Pitt being initially set to play Tommy Williams (a minor, yet key character in the movie’s narrative) before his growing popularity led to him dropping out to go and star alongside Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire instead. In an interview for its 25th anniversary, Pitt said he didn’t regret passing on the film, explaining “I just believe in the way things work out, and that was someone else’s role.” Darabont was equally good-natured in the same interview, where he praised Pitt’s replacement, Gil Bellows, saying he “enhanced the movie” with his own performance.

Apollo 13

Ron Howard’s 1995 dramatization of the failed Apollo 13 mission still ranks among the actor-turned director’s most celebrated movies to date. That can partly be attributed to the film’s technical accuracy and tight construction (it eventually won an Oscar for Best Editing), but also the performances by leads Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton as three astronauts struggling to keep a cool head while fighting to stay alive in the middle of outer space. In an interview with The Morning Call the same year the movie opened, Pitt revealed he’d nearly been cast in Bacon’s role as the Apollo 13’s backup Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert, but turned it down. The reason? So he could star in Fincher’s bleak crime mystery-thriller Se7en instead. Both that film and Apollo 13 went on to become critical and commercial hits anyway, so everything more or less worked out for all concerned parties.

The Matrix

When it comes to The Matrix, the question isn’t so much which A-listers at the time passed on playing Neo as it is which ones didn’t turn down the role that cemented Keanu Reeves’ legacy as an action movie megastar. Speaking at the 2019 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Pitt confirmed he was among the actors who turned down the part, saying “I really believe it was never mine… But I did pass on the Matrix. I took the red pill.” Pitt would instead go on to play one of his own iconic roles, Tyler Durden, in Fight Club five months after the Wachowski Sisters’ original Matrix opened in 1999, revolutionizing mainstream Hollywood sci-fi cinema in the process. Truth be told, it’s difficult to imagine Pitt fitting the role of Neo as comfortably as Reeves did anyway, so the actor is probably right when he says it was never really his role to take.

Almost Famous

As memorable as Billy Crudup is in Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical 2000 dramedy about a young journalist covering the up and downs of a ’70s-era rock band on tour, it could’ve been Pitt and not him yelling “I am a golden god!” in one of Almost Famous’ more… well, famous moments. Indeed, Pitt came close to playing Crudup’s role as Stillwater lead guitarist Russell Hammond in the film, having had a good experience meeting with Crowe during the casting process for his acclaimed ’80s teen rom-com Say Anything a decade earlier. Speaking on the Origins podcast as part of their oral history for Almost Famous (in commemoration of the movie turning 20 years old), Crowe provided some insight into why Pitt ultimately passed on playing the role, saying he believes “He had fallen in love with the idea of the character. But maybe there just wasn’t enough on the page.” Crowe also thinks Pitt was “uncomfortable” with the age difference between Hammond and Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), who’s meant to be well under 18 when she becomes Stillwater’s veteran groupie and romantically involved with Hammond.

The Bourne Identity

Having made his name as a character actor in the ’90s (in addition to winning an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting), Matt Damon was able to convincingly transform himself into an action star thanks to his turn in Doug Liman’s 2002 Robert Ludlum adaptation, The Bourne Identity. Before he signed on, though, the role of the eponymous assassin-turned amnesiac fugitive was instead offered to Pitt, at a time when he, too, had yet to really prove his bonafides in an action movie. However, he was already attached to costar in Tony Scott’s Spy Game by then, and had to turn Liman’s film down after he and Universal were unable to reach a deal to accommodate his work schedule. But even without him, The Bourne Identity was a big hit (leading to three sequels and a spinoff), and Damon’s Jason Bourne is now regarded as one of the quintessential post-9/11 heroes to emerge in Hollywood in the ’00s.

About a Boy

Hugh Grant isn’t typically a name associated with Pitt, but such was the case with Chris and Paul Weitz’s 2002 adaptation of the Nick Horney novel, About a Boy. The film stars Grant as Will Freeman, an immature man devoid of responsibility (right down to not even having a job and living off the royalties from his father’s hit Christmas song, instead) when he meets Marcus, a peculiar boy who changes all that. The pair cross paths after Will pretends to be a single dad in order to gain the interest of actual single moms – an idea Pitt reportedly found implausible when he was offered the role of Will, leading him to turn it down. Frankly, the Will character is so perfect tailored to Grant’s bumbling charms it’s hard to even imagine Pitt in his place. Because he passed, however, About a Boy was able to stick to the London setting of Hornby’s source material, and went on to become the beloved dramedy that it is (complete with a Pitt “cameo” where he appears on the cover of an issue of Esquire).

The Departed

A few years after The Bourne Identity (not to mention, the two actors sharing the screen in Ocean’s Eleven), Pitt and Damon’s paths crossed once more, this time on The Departed. Warner Bros., producer Brad Grey, and Pitt had originally purchased the rights to make the Americanized remake of the Hong Kong police drama-thriller Infernal Affairs in 2003, with the intention of having Pitt star as Boston police officer and Irish Mob mole Colin Sullivan opposite Leonardo DiCaprio as fellow officer William Costigan. As he explained to Interview Magazine in 2007, though, Pitt changed his mind when Martin Scorsese came aboard as director, saying “I thought it would be better if [the leads] were younger guys that were just starting their lives, guys coming out of the academy, guys who were hungry. I thought I was too old for it.” As a result, Damon was later cast as Sullivan in The Departed, which itself went on to become the film that finally snagged Scorsese his Best Director Oscar.

Kick-Ass

Just as superhero movies were really starting to take over Hollywood (thanks to the one-two punch of Iron Man and The Dark Knight in 2008), Matthew Vaughn gave the genre an R-rated ribbing with Kick-Ass, his 2010 adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic book of the same name. Pitt, who had previously worked with Vaughn on Guy Ritchie’s crime comedy Snatch, was among the film’s producers, and was even courted for the role of Damon Macready, aka. Big Daddy, during pre-production. His commitment to starring in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds prevented that from happening, though, so Nicolas Cage was brought in to play the character instead. As Vaughn pointed out to THR in a piece celebrating the hit movie’s 10-year anniversary, this was probably for the better and added an appropriately meta element to the self-made costumed vigilante (what with Cage being a huge comic book superhero fan in real life).

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/brad-pitt-movies-roles-characters-turned-down/

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