Iconic Horror Roles That Almost Went to Different Actors

Heather Langenkamp’s performance as Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street has a tendency to be overlooked when it comes to the most iconic final girls. While Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) always seem to come to mind first, it’s Nancy who spends the majority of A Nightmare on Elm Street on the offense, trying to stop her tormentor rather than run from them.

After the first film, Langenkamp would come back in both A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare as Nancy (and herself) and would appear in the horror genre many times throughout her career.

While more than 200 actresses auditioned for the role of Nancy, supposedly Courtney Cox was among the finalists after filmmaker Wes Craven saw her appear in both an episode of As the World Turns and in Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” music video.

The role would go to Langencamp, but Craven would eventually cast Courtney Cox as Gale Weathers in the Scream franchise, which became Cox’s only role within the horror genre. Had Wes Craven picked Courtney Cox to play Nancy, the Nightmare on Elm Street series would be wildly different, and the Scream franchise would probably have a different Gale Weathers.

Related: The Best Horror Movie of Each Decade from the Last Century

After the incredible failure of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, bringing Michael Myers back was the only way the popular slasher franchise could be saved. The problem was Jamie Lee Curtis had no interest in returning to the franchise (and never saw the fourth and fifth movies), and a new final girl-esque character was needed. Laurie Strode was written as being killed in a car accident, and the new role would go to her daughter, Jamie Lloyd. Lloyd was played by Danielle Harris in both the fourth film and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

One of the possible outcomes of the Jamie Lloyd casting was 11-year-old Melissa Joan Hart, who most would know from her eventual roles in Nickelodeon’s Clarissa Explains It All and the ‘90s-2000s run of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. This role may have been pivotal to the careers of both actresses, as Harris has been a constant staple in the horror genre, including a supporting role in Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies, the Hatchet franchise, and Shudder’s new Creepshow series, and Melissa Joan Hart has made a career by casually acting in made-for-TV Christmas movies.

While David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly is most memorable for its Academy Award-winning makeup and effects, the acting performances of Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis were both worthy of Academy recognition. Jeff Goldblum plays Seth Brundle as an eccentric yet charming know-it-all who, throughout his transformation into Brundlefly, becomes dangerously obsessive, controlling, and flat-out insane.

John Lithgow, another actor who thrives in playing insane characters, was actually offered the role of Seth Brundle but turned it down promptly due to the “icky story,”, his reluctance to play “something so grotesque”, and the exhaustion of his filming schedule. While Lithgow would go on to play mostly hammy, over-the-top villain performances in the ‘90s in films like Raising Cain, Cliffhanger, and Ricochet, it would have been interesting to see his take on Brundlefly, especially after seeing his chilling performance as the Trinity Killer in Dexter.

Fresh off his massive success in 1997’s Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio was becoming a mega-star in Hollywood. So much so that he was essentially given the reigns to control American Psycho. While screenplay writer and eventual director of the film, Mary Harron, preferred Christian Bale from the start, DiCaprio was selected and wanted Oliver Stone to direct the film. Harron thought that DiCaprio was too big of a star at the time and his “teenage girl fanbase” would affect the integrity of the role.

Everything was seemingly set to go for filming, but then DiCaprio and Stone couldn’t come to an agreement over the style and script, so both ended up leaving the project. Mary Harron was asked to direct the film, and she agreed with the expectation that Christian Bale would take the lead role. From there, Christian Bale delivered one of the most unhinged and iconic performances in one of the best horror movies of the 2000s.

Seeing anyone other than Robert Shaw in the role of Quint seems like an absolute travesty, but young director Steven Spielberg had another name in mind for the old scallywag. Lee Marvin, who had won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Cat Ballou just 10 years earlier, was Spielberg’s first choice for the role. Spielberg was enamored by Marvin’s authoritative roles in films like The Dirty Dozen and Sergeant Ryker, and he thought that personality type was perfect for the role of Quint. While Marvin would probably have made a great Quint, fortunately for us, he turned Spielberg down, and Robert Shaw was offered the role.

Had Marvin not said no, not only would we not have gotten the amazing ad-libbed monologue about the U.S.S Indianapolis, but we wouldn’t have had one of the best performances in all of Hollywood history, let alone the horror genre.

Related: Exclusive: Ian Shaw Talks Playing His Father Robert Shaw in Jaws-Inspired Play

At the time when John Carpenter’s Halloween was released, horror (and especially slasher) movies were basically the next step up from porn. So, it was somewhat of a surprise when a traditional British actor like Donald Pleasence signed on for a major role in an American horror movie. However, it was another British actor that came close to accepting the role before Pleasence that could have completely changed the trajectory of the franchise.

Sir Christopher Lee was asked to take the role of Dr. Sam Loomis but turned it down; a decision he would later state he regretted, as Donald Pleasence would return to the role of Dr. Loomis in another four films after the original, and the role would become one of the most iconic in both horror and Pleasence’s career. Lee’s work as Dracula in the Hammer Films Production Company during its most successful run was what caught John Carpenter’s eye to cast him in the role. If he would have accepted, who knows what the 13-film horror franchise would look like today.

The Silence of the Lambs is one of the most successful horror movies of all time, as its gruesome story and its cannibalistic villain, Hannibal Lecter, has become a permanent resident in horror iconography. Anthony Hopkins won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Lecter, but it was Gene Hackman, another two-time Oscar winner, who almost took the role.

Hackman fell completely in love with Thomas Harris’ original 1988 novel. So much so that the actor bought the film rights and planned to direct and star in the adaptation. However, due to his recent role in Mississippi Burning in 1988, Hackman felt he had been too involved in violent films and didn’t feel that continuance would be great for his mental health or his career. He stepped down, and Hopkins was so incredible that he won the Best Actor Award for just 16 minutes of screentime.

Molly Ringwald was one of the most recognizable actors in the 1980s. She starred in beloved John Hughes coming-of-age films like The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink. So, it’s not hard to figure out why Kevin Williamson had Ringwald in mind for the role of Sidney when he wrote Scream, which was a mid-‘90s teenage slasher flick.

By the time Scream came out, Ringwald was in her late 20s and had no interest in acting in teenage roles anymore. She declined the offer, and the role was given to 23-year-old Neve Campbell, who went on to appear in four more sequels in one of the highest-grossing horror franchises of all time. While Ringwald’s success tapered off in the ‘80s, she has seen constant work, recently appearing as a major character in Netflix’s Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Riverdale. While it would have been interesting to see Ringwald in the role, Campbell’s Sidney Prescott is regularly seen as the best-developed final girl in all of horror.

Jack Nicholson was pretty much always Stanley Kubrick’s choice to play Jack Torrance in the 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. However, there was a brief time when Kubrick thought the role may be better in the hands of Robert De Niro, who had won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor just five years earlier for The Godfather Part II.

Kubrick supposedly briefly considered De Niro in the early stages of pre-production, but after seeing Taxi Driver, decided that De Niro wasn’t unhinged enough for the role and decided to go back to his original choice of Nicholson. Nicholson would go on to give one of the most memorable performances in movie history, while De Niro would win his second Oscar for Raging Bull the next year. It makes you wonder exactly what Kubrick was looking for, considering De Niro’s unhinged roles in The Deer Hunter and later in Brazil and Cape Fear.

Related: The Shining: Why the 1997 Miniseries Deserves Much More Love

Misery is quite possibly the best Stephen King adaptation of all time, and that’s much in thanks to Kathy Bates’ eerie and terrifying performance as Annie Wilkes. However, before production started, the antagonist role was actually offered to singer-songwriter and actress Bette Midler.

Midler had been nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Rose (1979), and production thought she would have been perfect for the sledgehammer-wielding Wilkes, as she’d never done anything like that in her career. However, Midler turned down the role due to the violent nature of both the character and the story. She felt that Wilkes wasn’t a funny character and had no redeemable qualities.

Kathy Bates took the role and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, while Midler was nominated again the next year for For the Boys. Midler would eventually join the toned-down area of the horror genre in Hocus Pocus in 1993.