Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Original poster

Films that should have had someone else in the lead role

234 replies

SecondClassReturnToDottinghamPlease · 15/10/2023 23:32

I've got The Beach on in the background, and having read the book before it came out I was never convinced by Leonardo Di Caprio as Richard. I seem to remember Danny Boyle wanted the part to go to Ewan McGregor, who I think would have been much better. But it was felt LDC was a bigger actor who would have made the film more successful. It made me wonder about other films which would have been different if another actor was the lead role. Anyone got any examples?

OP posts:
beguilingeyes · 20/10/2023 17:25

70isaLimitNotaTarget · 20/10/2023 13:37

Who else was considered for the part of Freddie Mercury?
I thought the rest of the band were excellent in their casting.

Maybe the actor who plays Raj in Big Bang Theory?

Show quote history

It was originally going to be Sacha Baron Cohen, but it fell through.

bottleofbeer · 20/10/2023 21:44

Stephen Tomkinson was NOT DI Banks by any stretch of the imagination.

EtiennePalmiere · 21/10/2023 07:01

Sasha baron Cohen at some point but he wanted to do a less sanitised version and the estate vetoed it.

The actor playing Brian may looked exactly like him! How did they find him

Owlish1003 · 21/10/2023 10:55

bottleofbeer · 20/10/2023 21:44

Stephen Tomkinson was NOT DI Banks by any stretch of the imagination.

^^ a hundred times this!

Also, imho, David Jason in a Touch of Frost

and Mark Williams as Father Brown

Mrsjayy · 21/10/2023 11:10

EtiennePalmiere · 21/10/2023 07:01

Sasha baron Cohen at some point but he wanted to do a less sanitised version and the estate vetoed it.

The actor playing Brian may looked exactly like him! How did they find him

I think Ben Wishaw was also in the running ! I read something SBC wanted it to be grittier but the producers wanted to protect Freddies family his mother especially who was still alive., which is fair enough.the actor who played Brian May was great.

Hugosauras · 21/10/2023 11:14

Hannibal lecture should definitely have been played by Alan Carr!

beguilingeyes · 21/10/2023 11:39

Mrsjayy · 21/10/2023 11:10

I think Ben Wishaw was also in the running ! I read something SBC wanted it to be grittier but the producers wanted to protect Freddies family his mother especially who was still alive., which is fair enough.the actor who played Brian May was great.

Show quote history

Roger Meddows Taylor (two degrees, qualified dentist and posh) was portrayed as a cockney oik who didn't know who Galileo was.

Mrsjayy · 21/10/2023 11:41

beguilingeyes · 21/10/2023 11:39

Roger Meddows Taylor (two degrees, qualified dentist and posh) was portrayed as a cockney oik who didn't know who Galileo was.

Show quote history

Tbf the real Roger Taylor doesn't act like a 2 degreed dentist !

EtiennePalmiere · 21/10/2023 12:28

Oh I love Ben Wishaw !

Citrusandginger · 21/10/2023 12:52

MissBattleaxe
Emma Watson as Hermione Granger was a terrible choice imo. She's wooden and very stage schooly. I actually don't like the actress in real life but she was very different from the book version

Yes, Watson was a terrible choice. Pretty kid who couldn't act to play Hermione????

I think JKR said she thought EW was too pretty to be her Hermione.

RaisedOnADietofBrokenBiscuitsOh · 21/10/2023 12:57

Emma Watson should not have been Belle in Beauty and the Beast.

Taytocrisps · 21/10/2023 13:03

Oppenheimer. I caught a bit of the original TV series and the actor (Sam Waterston) was much more convincing in the role than Cillian Murphy.

GlitchStitch · 21/10/2023 13:14

The entire cast of the last little women film, hated all of it

Agree with this. I thought the BBC version that came out not long before this film was far better. Lawrie in the film looks about 12.

boscabosco · 21/10/2023 13:27

TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross · 16/10/2023 07:07

I bloody love the film (thank you, Alan Rickman) but Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves…

yes, also loved the film but he was so bad it was tragic

charabang · 21/10/2023 14:15

I thought Di Caprio and Winslet were an unlikely coupling in Titanic. It didn't sit right with me.

LolSpinner · 21/10/2023 14:34

delilabell · 16/10/2023 06:58

Harry potter. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson

I like them but they shouldn't have been cast in Harry Potter.

ageingdisgracefully · 21/10/2023 15:02

NineteenOhEight · 20/10/2023 08:13

I think that because ET had to play Elinor otherwise the film wouldn’t have got made, it made sense to age up Brandon by a bit, not to make her look very anomalous. (They had to age up Mrs Dashwood, too.)

And I actually think Hugh Grant was well cast, precisely because the film role didn’t make Edmund at all like the novel character — understandably, as Book Edmund was a dull, decent stick whose appeal was mysterious. If they’d cast someone who played him just as JA wrote him, it would have made Elinor’s plot inexplicable compared to Marianne’s with dashing (but evil) Willoughby. So they rewrote him as Hugh Grant, all adorable self-deprecating stammers and cutesy with Margaret (also reinvented for the film as adorable tomboy).

Brandon in the novel was also a rather stodgy older man who wore flannel waistcoats and complained of rheumatism, not Alan Rickman smouldering, and was very much presented as ‘dull, safe choice for Marianne, after she nearly killed herself through self-indulgence.’.

A modern audience isn’t going to necessarily buy the ‘be sensible (in the modern sense), not romantic’ moral, so the casting changed the message.

Show quote history

I love S and S, can accept that ET was too old and that others had to be aged up, but STILL feel Edward was miscast. I also thought Dan Stevens was miscast in the later version. They're both too obviously attractive to be Edward IMHO.

An earlier version of S and S has Robin Ellis (of one of the Poldarks) as Edward and he's perfectly cast - far more like book Edward in my eyes.

70isaLimitNotaTarget · 21/10/2023 15:12

Mrsjayy · 21/10/2023 11:41

Tbf the real Roger Taylor doesn't act like a 2 degreed dentist !

Show quote history

I have read he left dentistry to persue a degree in biology so didn’t qualify as a dentist. His life would’ve been so ,so different if he’d followed that path .

70isaLimitNotaTarget · 21/10/2023 15:14

And sir Dr Brian May must have a huuuuuuuge study to hang all his qualifications on, they are literally coming out of his ears 😃

PoloMintRoll · 21/10/2023 15:32

Emily Blunt in the new Mary Poppins. Her accent was awful.

LookItsMeAgain · 21/10/2023 15:37

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 16/10/2023 07:31

Emma Thompson was IMO too old to play Eleanor (Elinor?) in Sense and Sensibility.

Most of the characters in that movie were miscast because of their ages.

LookItsMeAgain · 21/10/2023 15:45

@hazandduck - you posted “Adam Scott auditioned for Jim Halpert and I think he would’ve been a better Jim than John Krasinski. JK was just a touch too tall and handsome to sell the underdog persona.”

Do you think JK is handsome?

LookItsMeAgain · 21/10/2023 15:56

Sean Connery as a Russian submarine captain.
Colin Farrell as Alexander.
John Wayne in Genghis Khan.
Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman in Far & Away (they both should be publicly flogged for that movie)

All of these roles should have gone to different actors

Spacecowboys · 21/10/2023 16:00

Nicholas stahl as John Connor in T3, just no. ( if anyone even remembers this) , Clare Danes was all wrong too. Jamie Dornan in fifty shades, didn’t like him in that role at all. Disagree with anyone who didn’t like Alan Rickman as Snape- he was perfectly cast imo.

LookItsMeAgain · 21/10/2023 16:04

ThelmaBorden · 20/10/2023 08:33

Ryan ONeill as Barry Lyndon
Rene Zellweger as Bridget Jones
Daniel Craig as Bond
Julia Roberts in Live Laugh Love - way too old
Meryl Streep in Mama Mia - ditto

on the subject of unrealistic and inappropriate age differences,
has anyone seen ‘Sabrina’ it’s an old classic apparently, which
we recently watched, a young, fresh faced Audrey Hepburn
with old, grizzled, grey skinned Humphrey Bogart? shudder

Both versions are very unbelievable. Bogart and Hepburn and then the more recent remake with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond.