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How Alec Baldwin lost Jack Ryan...
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It is only taken 20 years... Alec Baldwin has finally explained why he didn’t continue playing Jack Ryan in Patriot Gamws after creating Tom Clancy’s CIA hero in The Hunt For The Red October in 1989. “The truth is the studio cut my throat.”
He first discovered a fix was in during 1991, when his Red October director John McTiernan, told him “a very famous movie star” had quit his new project in order to make the Jack Ryan sequels (plural; as in another Harrison Ford franchise after Star Wars and Indy Jones).
Apparently, Paramount owed Ford a bundle for a film they never made. Turning Ford into Ryan would solve that issue, plus providing a bigger box-office name. “I sat there mildly stunned,” Baldwin blogged on Huffington Post, “for them to negotiate simultaneously with another actor was against the law.” Producer Mace Neufeld told him to sign
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whatever deal was offered. Hah! The studio wanted Baldwin to agree a contract with no firm dates... impossible as Baldwin was committed to a Tennessee Williams play. Should he drop Broadway and twist in the wind awaiting Paramount’s will? “They had the other guy all lined up, and they were looking for a way to gut me... I chose A Streetcar Named Desire. And I do not regret it.”
After two Ryan thrillers, Ford was also dumped - in favour of Ben Affleck - a worse Paramount idea than dropping Baldwin. This year, the fourth Ryan will be the second Kirk: Chris Pine.
[ See full story on Baldwin’s page among Actors A-Z]
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Hanks for the memory
Take one year of Tom Hanks’ long career and you find he was among first choices for Speed, the actioner that made Keanu Reeves. And Hanks was also asked to play Jerry Maguire, Larry Flynt,,, and Doctor Who.
Casting by Freud
Australian actress Robin McLeavy was considered for Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of of the 16th US President in the upcoming Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. She wound up playing his... mother!
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OMG!
They could've been
my Mom & Pop
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OK, Uncle Frank was really written for Kelsey Grammar and De Niro was asked to play Joe Pesci’s burglar... Small stuff compared to the astonishing 37 stars (Ford, Nicholson, Pfeiffer, etc) being considered for the forgetful parents in the first Home Alone in 1990. Even though these were nothing roles in a movie written for and duly stolen by the stranded kid, Macaulay Culkin.
Although none of the short-listed folk were ever officially coupled up, Mac’s Mom & Pop could have been - I’m guessing here, several stabs in the dark, right? - Glenn Close and Bill Murray... or Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Douglas.
Then again, why not Geena Davis and Kevin Costner, Darryl Hannah and Mel Gibson or even Debra Winger and Harrison Ford. Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Penn were other possible McCallisters. As were Sharon Stone and Sly Stallone or Sigourney Weaver and Tom Hanks.
Not to mention that Mac was the perect age to have been the result of the close encounter of the kitchen table kind in The Postman Always Rings Twice between... Jessica Lange and... Jack Nicholson!!
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Cat's Whiskers
Well, what else can I call this one... It’s the only example I know of an actress bein g dropped because the star was allergic to her cats.
Robert Altman had to replace Sandy Dennis in A Perfect Couple in 1978 because the five cats she brought to readings led to the hospitalisation of the film’s star, Paul Dooley... Another SD was sent for but Shelley Duvall had already begun The Shining in London. Marta Heflin filled in.
Up Close & Personal
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“I felt so dirty afterwards,” said Amanda Seyfried after testing - ie kissing - so many competitors for the roles of Peter and Henry in the updated Red Riding Hood. “It’s gross actually,” she told the BBC. “I was required to make out with each of them - and you don’t know what they’re going to do. I wanted to give each guy the best. I didn't want to give Shiloh Fernandez more than I gave Max Irons or any of the other guys. I was trying to be so good. I was just exhausted. So was my mouth.”
Funny, Brigitte Bardot never said the same after a remarkably similar experience during her celebratedsteeplechase of co-star tests for Henri-Georges Clouzot’s courtroom thriller, La vérité/The Truth, in 1960. In the mecs trooped, one after another... Hughes Aufray, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Belmont, Gérard Blain, Jean-Marc Bory,
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 Test Match. Bardot & Belmondo.
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Jean-Pierre Cassel, Marc Michel. On the bed-set, the realisateur’s instructions were the same for them all. “Go on - go on! - promenade a little with your lips on her face. Breathe in her ear... Murmur something... Be sexy!” Sami Frey won the role - and the girl.
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Black Lantern
Green Lantern was always going to be Reynolds, but The Closer’s Corey... not the Canadian Ryan. Writer-actor Corey is a comic book buff and met with Warners about playing John Stewart, the only black among the six variations of the titular hero. And penned his Green Lantern: Birth of a Hero in June 2007, Warners liked it enough to suggest a 2010 release. And then switched from Stewart (based by his creators on Sidney Poitier) to the test pilot Hal Jordan manifestation (kinda Paul Newman). Ryan won that role. Worse still for Corey, the Stewart character popped up in the movie... but played by Nick Jones.
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Copyright © 2008-2011 Crawley's Casting Calls. All Rights Reserved.
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WELCOME to an unique directory of what you never saw on-screen. The films the stars did NOT make. The movies that never were.
The most definitive collation of casting stories…
Check up on all the films - of yesterday, today and tomorrow - that your favourite stars never made… (Marlon Brando bypassed 130 !!) A cast of thousands - well, more than 4,860 stars to click on…More than 40 years in the making!! More than 950,000 words of spirited text…
The ultimate in movie trivia... Better! Exactly the kind of history that Hollywood deserves. Back to front. Upside-down. Inside out. Full of flashbacks, close-ups, tracking shots (and, alas some badly edited sequences - sorry about that!) forming a fascinating, new and often bizarre flip-side perspective on your treasured movies... and stars.
Oh Riley!
No fairy tale ending for Riley Keough. After making her movie debut as Marie Currie in The? Runaways in 2009, she succumbed to Kristen Stewart’s Twilight clout and thereby lost the female lead in Snow White and the Huntsman.
What’s that? Riley who? I’ll give you a clue. Her Mom is Lisa-Marie... And that means, Riley’s granddad is... Elvis Presley!
The Godfather needed the world’s best actor - Brando or... Olivier.
Before Redford chose Hoffman and Redford!
Elizabeth Counsell testing for Thunderball, 1965.
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