While he faces stiff competition from his contemporary Martin Scorsese for the title of greatest living director, Steven Spielberg is arguably the world’s most famous filmmaker. Everyone’s heard of Spielberg, everyone’s seen at least a couple of his movies, and every actor in Hollywood is dying to work with him.
As a result, the director can pretty much cast anyone he wants in each role in his movies. However, sometimes the stars don’t align, and there are scheduling conflicts or the material fails to connect with the producers’ top choice for a role. So, here are 10 actors who almost landed roles in the films of Steven Spielberg.
10 Sean Connery As John Hammond In Jurassic Park
When Steven Spielberg was casting Jurassic Park, he offered Sean Connery the role of the park’s creator John Hammond — described by the source novel’s author Michael Crichton as a dark inversion of Walt Disney — based on the strength of his performance as Indy’s father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
However, Connery turned the role down. Hammond ended up being played by Richard Attenborough, who Spielberg cast because he felt that a fellow filmmaker could get into the mindset of an egocentric creator who’s dangerously mad with power.
9 Stellan Skarsgård As Oskar Schindler In Schindler’s List
Stellan Skarsgård was considered for the Oskar Schindler role in Schindler’s List, which ended up being played by Liam Neeson. Funnily enough, about a decade later, Neeson was set to appear as Father Frank Merrin in Exorcist: The Beginning, but he dropped out, only to be replaced by Skarsgård.
Before Neeson was given the role of Schindler, Mel Gibson and Warren Beatty were also considered for the part.
8 Laurence Olivier As The Grail Knight In Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
The role of the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a small but significant one. Initially, the producers wanted the part to be played by Laurence Olivier, who was widely regarded to be the finest British actor of the 20th century.
However, due to his declining health, Olivier was unable to take the role, and passed away just a short while after the movie was released in 1989.
7 Al Pacino As Roy Neary In Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Richard Dreyfuss was the top choice for the role of Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but the studio was unwilling to meet his demands of $500,000 plus a percentage of the box office gross.
So, the role was offered to Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Gene Hackman. Nicholson worried the special effects would distract from his performance, Pacino simply wasn’t interested, and Hackman couldn’t leave L.A. for four months because his marriage was teetering on the brink of destruction. When James Caan wanted $1 million and 10% of the gross, the producers realized that Dreyfuss’ price wasn’t too high after all.
6 Edward Norton As Private Ryan In Saving Private Ryan
Steven Spielberg offered the role of Private Ryan in Saving Private Ryan to Edward Norton, but he turned it down to appear in American History X. The role ended up going to Matt Damon, who was introduced to Spielberg by his Good Will Hunting co-star Robin Williams.
Norton ended up competing with Saving Private Ryan’s Tom Hanks for the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 1999 ceremony. In the end, neither of them won, as the award went to Roberto Benigni for his performance in Life is Beautiful.
5 Liam Neeson As Abraham Lincoln In Lincoln
When Steven Spielberg’s biopic of Abraham Lincoln first entered development, Liam Neeson became attached to play Honest Abe. However, midway through development, he decided that he was too old to play the character, and dropped out of the project.
This allowed Spielberg to go with his original choice for the role, Daniel Day-Lewis, who’s only five years younger than Neeson. Day-Lewis was reluctant to take the part, feeling he couldn’t play such a historical icon. It was Leonardo DiCaprio who convinced Day-Lewis to take the role, although it’s unclear what he said to persuade him.
4 Javier Bardem As Witwer In Minority Report
Minority Report was delayed for a few years after Steven Spielberg took over his late friend Stanley Kubrick’s final project A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Tom Cruise was the only actor who remained attached through the delay. At the time, the movie would’ve starred Ian McKellen as Burgess, Cate Blanchett as Agatha, Matt Damon as Witwer, and Jenna Elfman as Lara Anderton.
After the delay, Javier Bardem was offered the role of Witwer, but turned it down because he didn’t want to spend months of his life chasing Tom Cruise around. So, Colin Farrell was cast in the role.
3 Robert Duvall As Chief Brody In Jaws
Robert Duvall had encouraged Steven Spielberg to direct Jaws because he wanted to play Quint. However, Spielberg felt that Duvall was too young for the part, and cast Robert Shaw in the role instead.
Spielberg offered the lead role of Chief Brody to Duvall instead, but the actor turned it down because he feared it would make him too famous. As Bob Balaban once reportedly said, “Never be hot, always be warm.”
2 Harrison Ford As Dr. Alan Grant In Jurassic Park
The role of Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park was originally offered to Harrison Ford, but he turned it down, because he simply didn’t feel like he was right for the part.
After seeing part of the finished movie with Sam Neill in the role (Ford has still never seen Jurassic Park all the way through), Ford maintained that it was the right decision to turn it down. If Ford had played Grant, he might have been too similar to Indiana Jones, whereas Neill made the character feel unique.
1 Tom Selleck As Indiana Jones In Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Casting Indiana Jones was tricky, but even when it became apparent that Harrison Ford was the perfect choice for the role, George Lucas was reluctant to cast him.
Having cast Ford in his previous two movies, American Graffiti and Star Wars, Lucas didn’t want to get pigeonholed in a Scorsese/De Niro dynamic with the actor. Tom Selleck came close to clinching the role — even wowing producers with a screen test — but fate had other plans. Selleck’s pilot Magnum, P.I. got picked up, meaning he couldn’t take the role of Indy. So, the part went to Ford after all, and film history was made.
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