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- Brad Davis, Midnight Express, 1978. "It was down to me and Brad, pretty nip 'n' tuck. Hell, well, they went the other way. You tell yourself: 'Well, there's a reason for that. I know there's a reason... what's the reason? Too tall. Too blond. Too dark.' I don't know of another career that has so much rejection in it." Brother Randy won a strong support role and British director Alan Parker eventually starred a dismal Dennis in Come See The Paradise, 1990.
- John Michael Graham, Halloween, 1978. Director and co-scripter John Carpenter found him a role to keep his lover happy. Except he had to leave PJ Soles for another movie. They wed, 1978-83, using her real surname: Hardon.
- Tom Wopat, The Dukes of Hazard, TV, 1979-85. “They asked me to play Luke Duke,” recalled Quaid. “I was broke at the time and my first big film had not yet opened - Breaking Away, 1979. I asked the director, Peter Yates about it. ‘Don’t do it,’ he said. ‘A lot is gonna happen for you.” And indeed while Wopat was making 128 episodes, Quaid shot 14 screen roles, including The Right Stuff, 1983.
- John Travolta, Urban Cowboy, 1980. One that got away. Co-writer and director James Bridges had co-written it for Dennis, who had everything except Travolta’s clout.
- Richard Gere, An Officer and A Gentleman, 1982. First choice: Travolta again. Dennis read for the Zack Mayo role after Travolta bolted. So did Kevin Costner and Eric Roberts. “Gere turned this down eight or nine times,” recalled director Taylor Hackford. Until producer Don Simpson “just made him do it.”
- Patrick Swayze, The Outsiders, 1983. Gave up a Coppola experience to be NASA's Mr Cool, astronaut Gordon Cooper in The Right Stuff. "I'd wanted to play Gordo a year before they even thought about the movie," he told me in Bavaria, "because I read the book - and I mean, he fell asleep on the launchpad!"
- Tom Cruise, Rain Man, 1988. The Babbit brothers were scripted for the Quaid brothers, Dennis reluctantly aiding an autistic Randy.
- Campbell Scott, The Sheltering Sky, 1990. Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s budget cuts meant William Hurt, Melanie Griffith, and Quaid, became John Malkovich, Debra Winger and Scott. So says Julidet Taylor, No one knows it better. She was the casting director. Author Paul Bowles also knew better: "It should never have been filmed. The ending is idiotic and the rest is pretty bad. "
- John Heard, Home Alone, 1990. An astonishing 37 stars (Harrison Ford,t Jack Nicholson, Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, etc) were considered for the forgetful parents - nothing roles in a film written for and duly stolen by the stranded kid, Macauley Culkin.
- Don Johnson, The Hot Spot, 1990. Robert Mitchum was the matrix of the drifter - and first choice in 1962. Quaid, Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mickey Rourke, Tom Selleck, Sam Shepard and Patrick Swayze were later in the mix - opposite Anne Archer, Melanie Griffith, Theresa Russell, Uma Thurman, Debra Winger or ultimately, Virginia Madsen, as the sensuous Dolly - finding sex in car “ more fun than eating cotton-candy barefoot.” Director Dennis Hopper called it “Last Tango In Texas. Real hot, steamy stuff.” Chicago critic Roger Ebert hailed it as “a superior work in an old tradition.” They wuz right!
- Bill Campbell, The Rocketeer, 1991. Flop needed something, even Quaid's cockiness, but Campbell better suited Disney's pocket and the comic-book's "regular schmo" hero.
- Kevin Costner, JFK, 1991.
- Kevin Bacon, JFK, 1991.
- Michael Douglas, Basic Instinct, 1991.
- Tom Berenger, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, 1992. One of many named - along with brother Randy - during a ten year struggle to film the Peter Matthiessen novel.
- Jeff Daniels, The Butcher's Wife, 1991. Planned opposite his wife, Meg Ryan. Instead, they returned to the screen in Flesh and Bone, 1993.
- 16 - Patrick Bergin, The Map of the Human Heart, 1992. He had been expected to substitute Willem Dafoe.
- Tom Hanks, Sleepless In Seattle, 1993. "I could never hold a job for more than three months, which works out well because that's how long a movie shoots."
- Patrick Swayze, To Wong Fu, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, 1995. Hollywood’s first drag race for 36 years... Some guys looked too pretty: Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, James Spader. The others? You don’t want to know!
- Don Johnson, Tin Cup, 1996. Too expensive as Kevin Costner's rival in putting balls and putting out.
- Lothaire Bluteau, Nostromo, 1996. Dennis was in heaven - selected in 1991 by his all-time favourite film-maker, David Lean. Then, sheer hell - Lean's health and financing tumbled and Joseph Conrad's novel wound up as a dismal TV mini.
- Gary Oldman, Batman Begins, 2004.
- Linus Roache, Batman Begins, 2004.
- Bill Paxton, Haywire, US-Ireland, 2011. While poor Quaid was stuck in Soul Surfer, Steven Soderbergh made his first (only) martial-arts thriller with super soldier Gina Carano holding her own with or against… Paxton, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and Channing Tatum. Preposterous magic!
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Actors (A..Z)