Star Misses

Imagine Nicole Kidman accepting the Academy Award for the role of Hanna Schmitz in The Reader. Or Gwyneth Paltrow boarding the Titanic. Or how about The Graduate with Robert Redford playing Benjamin Braddock–instead of Dustin Hoffman.

Those were studios’ early choices to fill these legendary film roles. Hard to believe? Little wonder: “The essence of a good casting decision is that you simply take it for granted,” says Janet Hirshenson, a casting agent behind some of Hollywood’s biggest films, including A Beautiful Mind, When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men.

The way she sees it, it’s only on the rare occasion–when viewers try to imagine a different casting–that they realize the impact of such decisions.

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“I think that when it all comes together and it works [you couldn't] imagine anybody else,” adds Jane Jenkins, Hirshenson’s casting partner and co-author of A Star Is Found: Our Adventures of Casting Some of Hollywood’s Biggest Movies. “It only sticks out like a sore thumb when it doesn’t work, but usually those movies don’t do well enough for anybody to even notice.”

In the ever competitive entertainment industry, making the right casting call is crucial to a film’s financial success. Opening-weekend box office figures have become an increasingly vital measure of a project’s long-term viability, and a star can make or break a vehicle. That is why the casting director, who works with the director, producer and studio executives, has such an enormous responsibility.

It’s also why the same stars wind up on seemingly every casting director’s list. After all, there’s only a select cadre of actors who can not only help secure funding but also bring in those box office dollars. Of late, that group consists of a handful of names–all of them male–among them, Tom Hanks, Will Smith and Matt Damon.

According to Hirshenson and Jenkins, actors typically pass on these starring roles for one of two reasons: money or time. More specifically, they can’t get enough of the former or they don’t have enough of the latter. Other times stars are simply uninterested–or even uncomfortable–with the role they’re being asked to play; when you’re on the industry’s A-list, you’re allowed to be picky.

Take Mark Wahlberg, who has admitted to declining the starring role in 2005′s Brokeback Mountain. The Departed actor told the press he turned down the opportunity because he was “a little creeped out” by the gay cowboy storyline and sex scene.

Wise move? Probably not. The critically acclaimed film scored Heath Ledger an Oscar nod and generated nearly $180 million at the worldwide box office, according to Web site Box Office Mojo.

More recently, Australian star Nicole Kidman was forced to bow out of Stephen Daldry’s postwar-Germany drama The Reader for reasons having little to do with the film itself; she became pregnant.

Fortunately, Titanic star Kate Winslet was able and willing to take her place, and the casting decision proved a boon for the English actress: She took home her first Oscar for the challenging role at this year’s Academy Awards.