We all know the feeling of rejection – but not all of us know what it’s like to be rejected specifically from one of the highest grossing movies of all time.
Or one of the most popular TV shows of all time. Or an Oscar winning role.
Some people, like Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey and Jake Gyllenhaal do know that feeling.
We’ve rounded up a list of your favourite actors who missed out on (or totally blew) the chance to play TV and film’s most iconic roles, from Forrest Gump to Titanic’s Jack Dawson:
Nicole Kidman – Notting Hill
It’s hard to imagine a world where Nicole Kidman was ever turned away from a role for not being famous or talented enough.
However, in the ’90s, that was an actual thing that happened!
While promoting her TV show The Undoing in 2020, the Oscar winner told Marie Claire she’d hoped to star alongside her co-star in that series – Hugh Grant – a lot earlier in her career.
Kidman hoped to be Grant’s co-star in Notting Hill but waited until The Undoing in 2020. (HBO via AP)
“I really wanted the role that Julia Roberts played in Notting Hill,” Kidman said.
“Did you?” a surprised Grant replied.
“Yeah, I did. But I wasn’t well known enough, and I wasn’t talented enough…” she reckoned. As if!
It’s hard to imagine anyone else in this scene but Julia Roberts! (Universal Pictures)
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Amanda Seyfried – Wicked
The world has been living in Oz for more than a year as Wicked took over the box office, but in another life, it would be Amanda Seyfried dressed in pink on the global red carpets instead of Ariana Grande.
This could’ve been Amanda Seyfried. (WireImage)
The Mean Girls star went through six rounds of auditions to play Glinda while working on The Dropout, a drama miniseries about the rise and fall biotechnology company Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes.
“I literally bent over backwards while playing the hardest role of my life. But I think it also taught me how far I’ve come as a singer, which I really wanted to prove,” she told Backstage.
Seyfried worked overtime to try and secure the role of Glinda, while she missed out she says it’s reignited her passion for singing. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)Vince Vaughn – Friends
Vince Vaughn auditioned to be one of everyone’s six friends, Joey Tribbiani, but of course lost out to Matt LeBlanc.
Casting director Ellie Kanner remembered Vaughn as “handsome and tall” and a “good actor,” but told Huffington Post he just didn’t fit as well as LeBlanc.
The Friends cast, without Vince Vaughn of course! (Getty)
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Oddly enough, he later starred in The Break Up alongside Jennifer Aniston, and they briefly dated in real life!
Luckily, Vaughn did alright for himself without the Friends job. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
There were dozens of big names who tried and failed to be one of the leads in what would become one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time: Jon Cryer, Hank Azaria, Kathy Griffin, Jon Favreau and Eric McCormack to name a few.
Matthew McConaughey – Titanic
James Cameron’s Titanic held the title of highest grossest film of all time for 12 years, so it was probably one audition you didn’t want to bomb.
No such luck for Matthew McConaughey, whose time in front of Cameron didn’t go so “alright, alright, alright”.
If only Jack was proudly Texan. (Getty)
In a posthumous memoir, producer Jon Landau said McConaughey was the favourite to play Jack and even did a reading alongside Kate Winslet.
However, he read the part in his own Texas accent – and when asked to mix it up, he reportedly told Cameron: “No. That was pretty good. Thanks.”
“Let’s just say, that was it for McConaughey,” wrote Landau.
Of course, Leonardo DiCaprio went on to play Jack Dawson. (Paramount Pictures)
Jamie Foxx – Jerry Maguire
Even celebrities get star struck!
That was the downfall of Jamie Foxx as he auditioned for Cuba Gooding Jr’s role of Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire.
Show me the money! (Sony Pictures Releasing)
“Imagine you’re from Texas, and you’ve done a little bit of s–t, but you ain’t seen no real f–king stars, right?” Foxx told Howard Stern in 2007.
Things only went from bad to worse as he mistook Cruise taking a dramatic pause to mean he’d lost his place in the script.
“So I blew it, but I blew it so bad that he just started laughing at me,” Foxx said.
Sounds rough, but Foxx got it right in the end as he starred alongside Cruise in 2004’s Collateral.
He also won an Oscar and had a successful music career, so he’s done just fine. (Parrish Lewis/Netflix via CNN Newsource)
READ MORE: 10 iconic Hollywood movies that were almost never made
John Travolta – Forrest Gump
Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump is as iconic as it gets, but it almost wasn’t to be!
Tom Hanks IS Forrest Gump, but he almost wasn’t. (Paramount Pictures)
Originally, the role was offered to none other than John Travolta – yep, director Robert Zemeckis didn’t even require him to audition!
However, Travolta turned down the role to instead work on Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, Pulp Fiction.
Not a bad trade-off! (Getty)
Hanks went on to win his second Best Actor Oscar – beating Travolta in the category at the 1994 awards.
Tom Holland – Star Wars
Sometimes, co-stars can be a little unconventional.
That’s often the case in the Star Wars franchise – and it was the reason for Tom Holland’s most disastrous audition as he looked for a role in The Force Awakens.
Holland auditioned for John Boyega role as Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. (Walt Disney Studios)
“I was like four or five auditions in, and I think I was auditioning for John Boyega’s role. I remember doing this scene with this lady, bless her, and she was just a drone,” Holland recalled to Backstage.
“So I was doing all of this, like, ‘We gotta get back to the ship!’ And she was going, ‘Bleep, bloop bloop, bleep bloop.’ I just couldn’t stop laughing. I found it so funny.”
Beep boop bleep bloop bloop. (Getty)Britney Spears – The Notebook
Crossroads was an iconic film starring Britney Spears (okay, maybe “iconic” is subjective), but to follow it up with The Notebook? Now that’d be one for the books!
Speaking of, in her memoir Spears said she was one of the final two contenders for the role of Allie alongside eventual star Rachel McAdams.
It’s one of the most iconic romance scenes of all time. (New Line Cinema)
Spears even read alongside Ryan Gosling, who she knew from their years on The All New Mickey Mouse Club, but admitted she was glad to lose out in the end as she struggled to separate herself from an acting job.
“I ended up walking differently, carrying myself differently, talking differently. I was someone else for months while I filmed Crossroads,” Spears wrote.
Allie could’ve been ‘Britney B—h’. (Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images/File)Jake Gyllenhaal – The Lord of the Rings
Jake Gyllenhaal is definitely not the worst actor in the world, but for a moment, Peter Jackson thought he was.
Gyllenhaal auditioned to play Frodo in Jackson’s epic trilogy but it was doomed from the start.
Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings. (New Line Cinema)
“I did a scene with lines and I didn’t have an accent, because everyone has a British accent in that,” Gyllenhaal recalled on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“Literally, [Jackson] turned to me – he’s like, ‘You are the worst actor that I have ever seen.'”
Not your average hobbit… (Getty)
Rough!
READ MORE: 10 of the highest grossing TV shows of all time
Jennifer Lopez – Evita
JLo spent weeks preparing to audition for the role of Eva Perón in Alan Parker’s 1996 film adaptation of Evita.
But when she actually did it, the director had some bad news.
“I had been practicing for weeks and I sang my heart out and [Parker] goes, ‘You’re amazing. You know Madonna has the part, right?’ ” she recalled at a Q&A for her 2025 musical Kiss of the Spider-Woman. “I said, ‘Okay, bye-bye. Nice to meet you.'”
Hard to compete with the Queen of Pop. (Buena Vista)
Turns out that wasn’t the only musical she missed out on either!
”I remember auditioning for Evita, I remember auditioning for Chicago and for Nine — getting very close on Nine,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
JLo finally had her movie musical dreams come true with Kiss of the Spider-Woman in 2025. (Getty)
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