The most important part of any action movie is, of course, the action itself. But the audience won’t engage with that action if they don’t care about the hero at the center of it. Even with director John McTiernan’s perfect pacing and tonal balance, Die Hard wouldn’t work nearly as well without Bruce Willis’ everyman performance as John McClane.
But the casting team behind any movie will consider a few different actors before finding the right person. For example, Willis wasn’t the first choice to star in Die Hard. Additionally, these alternative stars could’ve played iconic action heroes as well.
Brad Pitt As Jason Bourne
According to Variety, Brad Pitt was considered to play Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity, but he turned it down to star in Spy Game with Robert Redford.
Instead, Bourne was played by Matt Damon. Since he was best known for sensitive dramas like Good Will Hunting at the time, some moviegoers doubted that Damon could pull off the role of an amnesiac superspy. He ended up proving these doubters wrong and making an icon out of the character.
Gal Gadot As Furiosa
While Tom Hardy played Max, the real star of Mad Max: Fury Road is Charlize Theron as his righteous companion, Imperator Furiosa, who liberates Immortan Joe’s enslaved wives and drives them across a post-apocalyptic wasteland to a supposed safe haven.
According to IndieWire, Gal Gadot was considered for the role before Theron was cast. Gadot said, “I had so many ‘almosts’ for big, great things, but I was never big enough of a name. It was always me and ‘the big name.’” However, if she’d played Furiosa, she might not have been able to play Wonder Woman in the DCEU.
Jeff Bridges As Bryan Mills
Liam Neeson was so perfect for the role of ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills in Taken that it ended up reinventing his career, turning him into an action hero and pioneer of the “geriaction” subgenre.
However, according to the Irish Post, the first choice was Big Lebowski star Jeff Bridges. After Bridges dropped out, writer-producer Luc Besson approached Neeson. Although he expected the movie to go straight to video, Neeson accepted the part.
Will Smith As Neo
According to Entertainment Weekly, Will Smith was the Wachowskis’ top choice to play Neo in their mind-boggling sci-fi opus The Matrix. However, Smith turned it down to do Wild Wild West, which ended up becoming the first box office bomb of his career. The actor later regretted the decision, but doesn’t think he was right for The Matrix.
Smith explained, “Keanu [Reeves] was perfect, Laurence Fishburne was perfect. So, I probably would have messed The Matrix up. I would have ruined it, so I did y’all a favor.”
Al Pacino As John Rambo
When First Blood initially went into development, according to Uproxx, the role of John Rambo was offered to Al Pacino. Pacino was interested in the project, but wanted the character to be written as more of a madman to match the intensity of the source material.
Of course, Sylvester Stallone landed the part and the movie ended up launching his second big franchise after Rocky. The Rambo series never reached Rocky heights of blockbuster-dom, but it’s a favorite among fans of action cinema.
Steve McQueen As Harry Callahan
Clint Eastwood embodied the role of vigilante cop Harry Callahan in Don Siegel’s gritty police thriller Dirty Harry so well that it challenges the Dollars trilogy’s “Man with No Name” antihero for the title of the actor’s most iconic role.
But according to Mental Floss, the role was offered to a bunch of other actors first. Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, and Frank Sinatra were all offered the role. Sinatra was briefly attached, but had to pull out after injuring his hand.
Tom Selleck As Indiana Jones
According to IGN, it was clear to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg early on in the development of Raiders of the Lost Ark that Harrison Ford was the ideal Indy. But Lucas was reluctant to cast Ford, because he’d already done three movies with him and didn’t want to become inextricably tied to him.
After an extensive casting search, Lucas and Spielberg decided on Tom Selleck. However, Selleck had to drop out because he couldn’t get out of his commitments to Magnum, P.I., and Ford was cast as Dr. Jones, as fate destined it to be.
Charles Bronson As Snake Plissken
Kurt Russell was always John Carpenter’s top choice to play grizzled antihero Snake Plissken in his dystopian ‘80s actioner Escape from New York, but the financiers AVCO Embassy Pictures were reluctant to cast him as he was known as a family-friendly Disney star.
According to Den of Geek, the studio sought to cast a gruffer actor like Charles Bronson or Tommy Lee Jones. Carpenter explained, “Charles Bronson had expressed interest in playing Snake. But I was afraid of working with him. He was a big star and I was this little s**t nobody.”
Meryl Streep As Ellen Ripley
According to Digital Spy, Meryl Streep was Ridley Scott’s top choice for Ellen Ripley, the lead role in his sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien. However, her long-time partner John Cazale had just passed away and Scott didn’t think it would be appropriate to offer Streep a role at such a difficult time, so he never extended the offer.
Scott instead decided to go with a then-unknown actor, Sigourney Weaver, who ended up blazing the trail for female-led action movies with her fierce portrayal of a xenomorph-killing, android-hating badass.
Frank Sinatra As John McClane
When Die Hard first went into development, according to NME, the studio was contractually obliged to offer the lead role to Frank Sinatra, who was 70 years old at the time. Die Hard was being adapted from Roderick Thorp’s novel Nothing Lasts Forever, the sequel to The Detective, whose 1968 adaptation had starred Sinatra.
Thankfully, Sinatra turned it down, and the studio was free to cast Bruce Willis, who at the time was known for the TV series Moonlighting. Willis’ everyman portrayal of McClane offered a sharp, relatable counterpoint to the superhuman Stallone and Schwarzenegger characters that dominated ‘80s action cinema.
