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12 Crazy Reasons That Actors Got Rejected For A Role

There's a chance that at some stage of your life, you won't have a job. According to recent statistics, 1.5 % of people in work experience unemployment during three months for a variety of reasons, including being fired, laid off, not having a steady job, etc. Even though they are in a slightly different situation than the rest of us; when you get fired, it doesn't end up on "Access Hollywood", that number includes members of the Entertainment industry.
Actors lose their jobs for many of the same reasons that ordinary people do, including failed projects, problems with managers, and unforeseen scheduling conflicts. However, your boss is unlikely to give you a pink slip based on "creative differences," and there are other situations that are unique to performers, such as disputes over profit participation, castmate intimidation, and disagreements over the direction of the performance. Body image, age, nationality, and other aspects of an actor's dismissal that would seem ridiculous in a conventional workplace occasionally even qualify as capricious reasons.
Following is a list of actors who, for utterly trivial reasons, were denied roles in big Movies.

#1 Amanda Seyfried turned down Guardians of the Galaxy because she thought it would flop

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Amanda Seyfried had several reasons for declining the role of Gamora in "Guardians of the Galaxy." The first was the makeup required for the role: in an interview with ComicBook.com in 2020, Seyfried said, "I was just like, 'Ah, I don't want to be green. It's just so much work,'"
However, Seyfried had another concern about joining the Guardians. "I didn't want to be part of the first Marvel movie that bombed," she admitted. Seyfried's second fear was that being associated with a massive failure would harm her career. "Because if you are the star of a giant movie like that, and it bombs, Hollywood does not forgive you," she explained.

#2 Andrew Garfield's no-show at a studio event may have cost him Spider-Man

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With Andrew Garfield's triumphant return as Spider-Man in "Spider-Man: No Way Home," many fans were left wondering why he had left the Marvel film series in the first place. While it was most likely a combination of factors, the most trivial reason was revealed as part of Sony's infamous 2014 email hack.
Garfield was supposed to attend a Sony event where then-studio chairman Kaz Hirai planned to reveal him as the star of "The Amazing Spider-Man 3." While Garfield arrived in Rio, he did not attend the event, citing jet lag fatigue. As a result, Hirai was forced to scramble at the last minute, canceling the announcement.
Though the specific reason for his dismissal was never revealed, Garfield and Sony parted ways soon after the Rio event dust-up.

#3 Charlize Theron was hired and then fired from Chicago

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In the movie version of the hit Broadway musical "Chicago," Oscar-winner Charlize Theron was cast as Roxie Hart. For Theron, the role was a dream come true.
Unfortunately, her dream of appearing in "Chicago" was dashed. "I think because I had [the role] I was like, 'Oh, I'm going to make this movie,' and then I was kicked off it."
During filming, the director who cast Theron as Roxie was fired and replaced by another director, who recast the role with Renee Zellweger, who won the second of four Golden Globes for her performance. "She did an amazing job," Theron, a fan of the film, said.

#4 Chris Pratt was almost too heavy for Moneyball

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Pratt blamed his weight gain of more than 40 pounds between 2009 and 2011 on his then-wife Anna Faris in a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly.
While Pratt's huskier build was fine for Andy Dwyer, it cost him the role of real-life professional baseball player Scott Hatteberg in "Moneyball." "That was the first time I heard someone say, 'We're not gonna cast you — you're too fat.'" Pratt told Vanity Fair. Pratt said he took matters into his own hands to lose weight because he couldn't afford a trainer. "It was all running and crash-dieting and cutting alcohol," he explained. Eventually, Pratt landed not only the audition for "Moneyball," but also the role.

#5 Henry Cavill was told he was too chubby to play James Bond

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Cavill stated in the Men's Health article that he auditioned for Bond before Daniel Craig took over the role in 2006's "Casino Royale." He claimed he was a finalist for the role until the screen test required him to wear nothing but a bath towel. "I remember Martin Campbell, the director, saying, "I'm glad Martin said something because I respond well to truth," he said. "It helps me get better."
Campbell was asked to confirm whether Cavill's weight was a factor in his and the Bond producers' decision to cast Daniel Craig as 007. "[Cavill] did a good test, [but] he was too young, and he just wasn't as experienced as Daniel," Campbell explained in 2022.

#6 James Purefoy was (maybe) dismissed from V for Vendetta because of the mask

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Initially, James Purefoy was cast as the titular antihero, terrorizing a totalitarian future England government. He left the role after three weeks due to difficulties wearing the character's signature Guy Fawkes mask, according to reports. In an interview, director James McTiegue implied this account, saying, "It's hard putting anyone in a mask."
Hugo Weaving, who took over for Purefoy as "V," hinted in an interview that the mask was the root of the issue. "I was very surprised to get the call saying, 'Well, look, we've actually sort of parted ways with James Purefoy,'" he said. "It was to do with animating the mask and they didn't think it was working."
In an interview, Purefoy appeared to refute that account.

#7 Meryl Streep was told she wasn't attractive enough for King Kong

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Meryl Streep was asked to audition for producer Dino De Laurentiis' high-profile remake of "King Kong" in 1976. But, as she explained on "The Graham Norton Show" in 2015, her audition ended just as quickly as it began. Streep was contacted by De Laurentiis's son to audition for the role of Dwan, but upon arriving at the production office, she quickly discovered that she was not what the veteran producer had in mind.
"The father said to his son in Italian — because I understand Italian — 'Why do you bring me this ugly thing?' Very sobering!" Streep joked to Norton and other guests Mark Ruffalo and James McEvoy. "So I said to him, 'I understand what you're saying. I'm sorry I'm not beautiful enough to be in 'King Kong.'"

#8 Paul Bettany wasn't American enough for Legally Blonde

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According to casting director Joseph Middleton in a 2021 oral history of "Legally Blonde," there was one serious flaw in casting Bettany as Emmett. "I loved [him] for the [Emmett] role, but he was British, and [the producers] felt like it needed to be a real American,"  she says.
Karen McCullah Lutz, co-scripter, noted that she and co-author Kirsten Smith had an actor in mind from the beginning. "We always called [Emmett] 'the Luke Wilson character' while we were writing it,"  she remembered. "They saw some other actors, and finally Joseph was like 'Maybe we should get Luke to play the Luke Wilson character.' I was like, 'You think?'"

#9 Tom Holland couldn't stop laughing and blew his Star Wars audition

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Tom Holland, star of "Spider-Man: No Way Home," recalled how laughter disrupted an important audition on a 2021 episode of the YouTube series "Hot Ones." While attempting to withstand a variety of scalding hot sauces, Holland remembered how his audition for the role of Finn in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" was destroyed by his scene partner, who was voicing a droid.
"I just remember thinking there's no way this lady's going to read the robot's lines opposite me because that would be ridiculous," Holland explained. "I don't remember what my line was, but it was [something like], 'Let's get back to the Falcon!' and this lady, bless her, would sit there with full commitment and was like, 'Be-boop-be-boop.'"
"I remember saying, 'You're not actually going to do that, right?' And she was like, 'Well yeah, the robot's part of the scene, he's the character,"' said Holland. "I just got the giggles, because you know when you realize you've got something so wrong? I just couldn't stop laughing."

#10 Too old at 29: why Olivia Wilde didn't land The Wolf of Wall Street

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In a 2016 interview, Howard Stern asked Wilde if she had ever lost a role because the producers thought she was too attractive. Wilde responded that she had been turned down for a role in a film because she was "too sophisticated." " "And then I found out later that they actually said 'old.' I want to make a translation sheet for Hollywood that's all the feedback your agents give you and what it really means," she explained.
The movie in question was "The Wolf of Wall Street," and Wilde was 29 at the time of the casting call.

#11 Violence spurred Will Smith to drop Django Unchained

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According to Smith, he agreed to collaborate with Tarantino because of the story's arc. "To me, it's as perfect a story as you could ever want," he said. "A guy that learns how to kill to retrieve his wife that has been taken as a slave."
The intention behind Django's actions, however, was where Smith and Tarantino disagreed. "I wanted to make that movie so badly, but with that story, I felt the only way I could make that movie is it had to be a love story, not a vengeance story," Smith explained. "Violence begets violence. For me, I just couldn't connect to violence being the answer. Love had to be the answer."
Jamie Foxx eventually took Smith's place in "Django."

#12 Worried about being known as Mr. Wolf, Russell Crowe said no to Wolverine

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In 2017, Crowe was asked why he declined the role of Wolverine in "X-Men" while participating in the daytime television show "Fitzy and Wippa." Although Crowe explained that the actor had already had his fill of wolves while filming "Gladiator," he was director Bryan Singer's first choice. "If you remember, Maximus has a wolf at the center of his cuirass, and he has a wolf as his companion... which I thought was going to be a bigger deal at the time. So I said no because I didn't want to be "wolfy," like, Mr. Wolf."
Crowe later realized that "Gladiator" director Ridley Scott removed a lot of the wolf references from the finished film.
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