A Star Was Almost Born? Here’s Who Bradley Cooper Wanted to Cast in His Movie

Michelle Ruiz
Updated

A Star Is Born, the all-consuming, tear-jerking Titanic of our time, almost looked—and sounded—very different. Actor, director, and all-around auteur Bradley Cooper reveals in a new Variety profile of Lady Gaga that he considered not playing the role of veteran singer-songwriter Jackson Maine himself.

“I saw this other person that I wanted to do this, who is an actual musician,” Cooper says. “But [the studio] wouldn’t make the movie with him.” And while he has cited Eddie Vedder as an inspiration for the character, Variety reports that the musician in question was White Stripes frontman Jack White, whom he met with before Gaga had entered the picture.

No spoilers, but early scripts of Cooper’s A Star Is Born also had different endings than the final version now devastating fans in theaters. “The first ending that I read, [Jackson] actually swims out into the ocean, where he commits suicide,” Toby Emmerich, chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, tells Variety. “The script that we had when he started shooting, he rides his motorcycle. It was more like the Kris Kristofferson ending in the 1976 version with the Ferrari . . . but Bradley changed his mind and came to see me and pitched the idea of what he ended up shooting. I think he was right. When I watch the movie now, I can’t imagine it ending any other way.”

And while it is similarly unfathomable to envision anyone but Cooper and Gaga searing hearts in this latest, $300 million–grossing, Oscar-buzzy remake of the Hollywood classic, other female leads were considered to star in modern revivals long before Gaga was cast. Most notably, there was a 2011 version in which Beyoncé was, for a short time at least, attached to costar with Cooper and director Clint Eastwood. Other false starts had been kicked around since the ’90s, according to producer Bill Gerber.

“Anytime a big pop star broke, we would talk about it,” he said. “Hey, should we do A Star Is Born with Lauryn Hill or Aaliyah? Whitney Houston had been talked about way back when.”

Ah, what could have been! But when the sun goes down and the band won’t play, we’ll always remember it this way.

Read on for more iconic roles that almost went to other actors.

16 Iconic Film Roles That Almost Went to Someone Else Inline

During an interview for the rom-com’s 25th anniversary, director Rob Reiner revealed that he talked to Tom Hanks about possibly starring in When Harry Met Sally . . . alongside Meg Ryan (four years before they became costars in Sleepless in Seattle). Ultimately, Reiner went with Billy Crystal, saying, “Meg and Billy hit it off right away.”
While writer and director Amy Heckerling wanted Alicia Silverstone to play Cher Horowitz from the beginning, the studio made her audition a lot of other actresses for the role, including Alicia Witt, Tiffani Thiessen, Keri Russell, and a then–virtually unknown Reese Witherspoon.
Jodie Foster won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, but she wasn’t director Jonathan Demme’s first choice. Demme actually wanted to cast Michelle Pfeiffer, the star of his previous film, Married to the Mob, but the actress turned down the opportunity because she thought the movie was too violent.
Jon Hamm catapulted to fame after being cast as the one and only Don Draper. Even though his strong chin and classic good looks made him a perfect fit for the role, Hamm admitted on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast that AMC initially offered the part to someone else. “The funny thing was, I think they went to Thomas Jane for it, and they were told that Thomas Jane does not do television,” he said. “[He's] now starring in Hung, by the way.”
Before Sarah Jessica Parker landed the role of a lifetime as Sex and the City’s inimitable Carrie Bradshaw, creator Darren Star offered the part to his friend Dana Delany. Lucky for us, Delany rejected the role because, according to her, she “had already done too many movies about sex.”
While it’s impossible to imagine Ferris Bueller as played by anyone other than Matthew Broderick, the part of the high school trickster was initially offered to a young Johnny Depp. The actor admitted during an Inside the Actors Studio interview that he had to turn down the role because of scheduling conflicts.
Bruce Willis passed on the chance to work on some very sexy pottery with then-wife Demi Moore. He reportedly turned down the part of her on-screen husband in the 1990 film Ghost.
Tom Hanks admitted he agreed to play the title character in Forrest Gump as soon as he finished reading the movie’s script in just an hour and a half—but he was only offered the role after John Travolta passed on the part. The role earned Hanks his second Oscar, and Travolta has since admitted that his decision to pass on the part was a mistake.
In a New York Times profile, Connie Britton recalled how heartbroken she was after losing the lead role in Jerry Maguire to newcomer Renée Zellweger. Her theory on why she lost the part? “Maybe I was too tall,” she said.
While most actors on this list perhaps foolishly passed on a role or lost a part to another actor, Eric Stoltz’s story truly takes the cake. The actor won the role of Marty McFly and actually shot the 1985 classic for a few weeks, but he was ultimately fired and replaced by Michael J. Fox.
It’s hard to believe one of the greatest on-screen pairings almost didn’t happen.Nicole Kidman was originally slated to play Mrs. Smith to Brad Pitt’s Mr. Smith, but she had to drop out of the movie because of a scheduling conflict with her other film, The Stepford Wives. The role eventually went to Angelina Jolie, and we know how the rest of that story goes.
Another famous redhead almost landed the part of the prostitute with a heart of gold in Pretty Woman. At the height of her Brat Pack fame, Molly Ringwald was initially considered for the starring role, back when Pretty Woman was titled $3,000 and had a very different, much darker script.
It was quite controversial when Renée Zellweger landed the lead role in the on-screen adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary. English actresses Emily Watson and Kate Winslet both auditioned for the role, but the latter was ultimately deemed too young to play the part of the 30-something spinster.
Whoopi Goldberg was hysterical as Deloris Van Cartier, a Las Vegas showgirl who goes into hiding as a nun in a convent, but the part was initially written with Bette Midler in mind. The Broadway and film star ended up passing on the film because she didn’t think her fans would want to see her wearing a habit.
Christina Applegate turned down the role of Elle Woods because, after 10 years playing Kelly Bundy in Married With Children, she feared she was getting typecast as the dumb blonde. Ironically, she now says passing on the Legally Blonde script was “stupid.”
Natalie Portman was only 13 years old when Baz Luhrmann cast her as the young Juliet Capulet in his Romeo + Juliet remake. But after the director saw Portman paired with Leonardo DiCaprio, who was eight years older than her at the time, they both agreed the age difference was simply too much. “It wasn’t appropriate in the eyes of the film company or the director, Baz,” Portman said.
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