Brad Pitt and Kate Hudson are notable examples of stars who turned down iconic movie and TV roles (in Almost Famous and The Devil Wears Prada, respectively), yet there are just as many famous faces who were rejected by producers and directors when their casting didn’t feel quite right.
Millie Bobby Brown and Dwayne Johnson are unquestionably two of the biggest stars in Hollywood today, but even they were turned down for movies that became hugely successful without them. In fact, some of the most iconic movies and TV shows of all time were one casting decision away from being totally different from what we love and celebrate about them.
Keep scrolling for a look at some notable movie and TV castings that never happened, including crucial roles in Beauty and the Beast, Friends, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and more:
Tiffani Thiessen
Imagine a world where Thiessen went from playing Bayside High’s head cheerleader Kelly Kapowski to working at the Central Perk in Friends?!
Morgan Pansing Photography Tiffani Thiessen’s teen daughter, Harper, has been watching some of her mom’s old shows — and so far she’s not impressed. “Recently she’s like, ‘I’m going to give 90210 a try,’ and she could not sit through it,” Thiessen, 50, exclusively told Us Weekly at the VOW for International Day of the […]
In 2018, Thiessen revealed on SiriusXM’s You Up With Nikki Glaser that she auditioned to play Rachel Green, the Friends character who eventually made Jennifer Aniston a TV icon.
“Did you know I tested for Friends, for Jennifer Aniston?” the actress confirmed. “I was just a little too young. I was a little too young to the pairing of the rest of them.”
Thiessen was only 20 years old during Friends’ casting search, so it’s perhaps no surprise she landed her breakout post–Saved by the Bell role as Valerie Malone in Beverly Hills, 90210 instead.
Idris Elba
The Golden Globe winner told People in 2018 that his love of musicals inspired him to pursue playing the boastful hunter Gaston in Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.
“I auditioned for Beauty and the Beast,” Elba confirmed. “For the movie, yeah! I called, I said, ‘I want in!’ They said, ‘Uh, you know, uh, well, OK.’ So, somewhere they have a tape of me singing.”
Luke Evans ultimately was cast as Gaston, perhaps because he had more musical experience from his starring roles in Rent and Miss Saigon in London’s West End.
Millie Bobby Brown
Brown has some notable experience playing genetically modified killing machines (hello, Eleven in Stranger Things!) so it makes sense that she auditioned to play Wolverine’s surrogate daughter X23 in 2017’s X-Men movie Logan.
The actress revealed to Variety that she had her heart set on the Marvel role, especially because of the incredible talent involved with the project.
It is impossible for actors not to have a “worst audition” story after years of trying out for roles — but some stand out more than others. Matt LeBlanc‘s worst audition earned him the role of Joey Tribbiani on Friends, one of his most famous characters to this day. “I remember I had gone in […]
“I was like, ‘It’s going to be amazing, I’m going to really prepare,’ and I sat in my room reading the lines,” she said in 2017. “Honestly, for me, I felt so — I felt [like] an actor, in the audition room, hitting [star] Hugh Jackman, and [director] James Mangold sitting right in front of me.”
Dafne Keen was eventually cast as X23, a role she reprised in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine.
“I watched [Logan]; she was incredible,” Brown said of Keen. “It meant so much to me.”
Dwayne Johnson
The Rock is no stranger to action franchises, given his appearances in the Fast & Furious Saga, G.I. Joe, Jumanji and The Mummy Returns, though there’s one action hero he never got a chance to play.
The former WWE champion confirmed via Twitter (now X) in 2017 that he wanted to bring author Lee Child’s military police hero Jack Reacher to the big screen before Tom Cruise landed the role.
“Luv the character. Bout 10yrs ago I went after the role, but Cruise got it. Was great motivation for me to always stay hungry,” Johnson wrote.
Cruise played Jack Reacher in two feature films before Amazon rebooted the franchise as a live-action TV series starring Alan Ritchson in the title role.
Mindy Kaling
Kaling lamented to Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen in 2014 that “no one” ever invited her to auditions because she was “so specific” until she got a call for Bridesmaids.
“[That] was a movie I loved,” she said. “It was for Maya Rudolph‘s part. I practiced it so much and was so into it and I loved that whole cast.”
Kaling admitted that being passed over for the Kristen Wiig–starring comedy blockbuster was a “heartbreaker” because she was so excited to work with the movie’s all-star cast, which included Melissa McCarthy and Rebel Wilson.
Matthew McConaughey
Titanic’s climactic goodbye for its star-crossed lovers may have had an entirely different vibe if McConaughey had won the role of Jack Dawson instead of Leonardo DiCaprio.
McConaughey confided in a 2016 Playboy interview that he made it far enough along in the Titanic audition process that he thought he was a lock to play Jack.
“It was one of those auditions where I left and thought I had it,” he said. “I really enjoyed it. Kate Winslet really enjoyed it. That was a huge opportunity. But [director James Cameron] liked Leonardo DiCaprio better.”
Presumably, there were no hard feelings when McConaughey and DiCaprio teamed up on The Wolf of Wall Street nearly 20 years later, since both men ended up with impressive careers.
Kevin Bacon
The Footloose star revealed during a 2025 appearance on The View that he unsuccessfully campaigned to play a drummer in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.
Bacon seemingly had an edge because he’d previously worked with Spinal Tap II director Rob Reiner on the Oscar-nominated 1992 legal drama A Few Good Men, yet in the end, he wasn’t invited to join The Tap.
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“Somebody called [Reiner] for me, and I didn’t get the part,” Bacon revealed. “Spinal Tap, I’m so excited about part two, and the original it was a running joke that they just had drummers that would disappear.”
As Bacon mentioned, it may be for the best that he wasn’t cast in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, since every single one of the band’s (completely fictional) drummers have died under strange circumstances, from onstage explosions to being eaten whole by a snake.
Eddie Redmayne
Prior to Redmayne winning an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, he was in the running for Star Wars villain Kylo Ren before Adam Driver landed the job. Apparently, Redmayne’s Star Wars audition didn’t go well.
“They gave me like a Star Trek scene — or like something from Pride and Prejudice,” Redmayne told Uproxx in 2016. “It was one of those films. With films that top secret, they don’t give you the actual lines. So they give you a scene from Pride and Prejudice, but then they tell you you’re auditioning for the baddie. If you’re me, you then put some ridiculous voice on.”
Redmayne went on, “That was really a hilarious moment. Because it was [casting director] Nina Gold, who I have to thank a lot because she’s cast me in several films. And she was just sitting there and I was trying again and again with different versions of my kind of ‘koohh paaaah’ [Darth Vader breathing sound] voice. And after, like, 10 shots, she’s like, ‘You got anything else?’ I was like, ‘No.’”
Gwen Stefani
The whole course of celebrity culture may have been radically different if the No Doubt singer was cast opposite Brad Pitt in 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith instead of Angelina Jolie.
It’s almost inconceivable to imagine a Brangelina-less alternate timeline, but at least according to Stefani, it nearly happened.
During a 2016 appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Stefani said she’d had “a bunch of auditions” to play badass assassin Jane Smith in the action movie.
“I feel like I almost got it,” Stefani told host Howard Stern, before clarifying: “[It was] very competitive and I wanted to do it, but I wanted to do music more.”
While Stefani’s casting in Mr. & Mrs. Smith may seem like a stretch nowadays, she was building an impressive resume of acting roles around the time Mr. & Mrs. Smith came about. The most memorable of Stefani’s early roles was portraying Hollywood icon Jean Harlow opposite DiCaprio in legendary director Martin Scorsese‘s The Aviator in 2004.
