A History of Iconic Roles That Famous Actors Turned Down

Check out what could have been.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Actors are crucial to making characters iconic. A role could be written exquisitely on paper, but get the wrong guy up saying those lines, and a project will start to look more like a Lifetime movie than a major motion picture that's sure to receive Oscar-buzz upon its release. For instance: Han Solo portrayed by anyone other than Harrison Ford would be nearly blasphemous, even if that other person were someone as brilliant an accomplished an actor as Al Pacino. Similarly, it's hard to tell if The Blind Side would have still shown up in the Academy Awards' Best Actress category if Julia Roberts had been portraying the lead character instead of Sandra Bullock. 

The above examples, however, nearly happened, as did a whole bunch of other almost-castings of iconic roles in Hollywood. It must be tough as an actor to know that you turned down a role that could have been major, but it's safe to say things all worked out for the best. However, that doesn't mean we can't still gawk at what could have been. Prepare yourselves to enter an alternate universe now, with this History of Iconic Roles That Famous Actors Turned Down.

Written by Tanya Ghahremani (@tanyaghahremani)

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Lindsay Lohan as Regina George (Mean Girls, 2004)

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Leonardo DiCaprio as Max Dennison (Hocus Pocus, 1993)

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Jim Carrey as Buddy the Elf (Elf, 2003)

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Julia Roberts as Anne Tuohy (The Blind Side, 2009)

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Sandra Bullock as Maggie (Million Dollar Baby, 2004)

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Reese Witherspoon as Sidney Prescott (Scream, 1996)

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Sarah Michelle Gellar as Cher Horowitz (Clueless, 1995)

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Kim Basinger as Catherine Tramell (Basic Instinct, 1992)

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Henry Winkler as Danny Zuko (Grease, 1978)

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John Cusack as Walter White (Breaking Bad, 2008-Present)

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Ray Liotta as Tony Soprano (The Sopranos, 1999-2007)

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Bill Murray, John Travolta, and Chevy Chase as Forrest Gump (Forrest Gump, 1994)

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Paul Giamatti as Michael Scott (The Office, 2005-2013)

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Thomas Jane as Don Draper (Mad Men, 2007-Present)

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Burt Reynolds as John McClane (Die Hard, 1988)

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Sean Connery as Morpheus (The Matrix, 1999) and Gandalf (Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001)

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Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981)

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Molly Ringwald as Vivian (Pretty Woman, 1990)

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Edward Norton as Patrick Bateman (American Psycho, 2000)

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Sylvester Stallone as T-800 (The Terminator, 1984)

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Emily Blunt as Black Widow (Iron Man 2, 2010)

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Johnny Depp as Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986)

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Michelle Pfeiffer as Clarice (Silence of the Lambs, 1991)

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Jack Nicholson as Michael Corleone (The Godfather, 1972)

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Paul Rudd as Phil (The Hangover, 2009)

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Matt Damon as Harvey Dent (The Dark Knight, 2008)

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Gwyneth Paltrow as Rose DeWitt Bukater (Titanic, 1997)

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Kate Winslet as Viola De Lesseps (Shakespeare in Love, 1998)

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Will Smith as Django (Django Unchained, 2012)

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Al Pacino as Han Solo (Star Wars, 1977)

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