{"id":33053,"date":"2025-09-20T16:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T16:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/33053\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T16:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T16:50:09","slug":"robert-redford-begged-for-lead-role-in-iconic-60s-film-but-there-was-1-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/33053\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Redford Begged For Lead Role in Iconic ’60s Film But There Was 1 Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Redford\u2019s long movie career included roles in Barefoot in the Park, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Way We Were, All the President\u2019s Men, and an Oscar-nominated run in The Sting. But the beloved actor, who died on Sept. 16 at age 89, once pursued a famous role that he couldn\u2019t get\u2014because he was too good-looking.<\/p>\n

In 1967, Redford very much wanted to star in the film The Graduate, which was directed by Mike Nichols, whom he knew from his Broadway days.<\/p>\n

Redford auditioned for the lead role of Benjamin Braddock opposite Candice Bergen, but Nichols immediately rejected him for the part of the awkward college graduate. During a screening event in 2009, Nichols revealed that he turned Redford down for the role during a pool game.<\/p>\n

“I said, ‘You were wonderful, but you can’t play this, you could never play a loser in a million years. He said, ‘Of course I could.’ I said, ‘No, you can’t, I’m looking at you. You cannot possibly play a loser,\u2019\u201d Nichols recalled telling Redford, per the Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nichols also spoke about his rejection of Redford at a 2003 screening of The Graduate, according to Vanity Fair<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cI said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser.’ And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser.’ And I said, ‘Okay, have you ever struck out with a girl?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wasn’t joking,\u201d Nichols recalled.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfacSIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox<\/a>\ud83c\udfac<\/p>\n

Dustin Hoffman, then 29, ultimately scored the role as Braddock, with Katharine Ross playing his love interest, Elaine Robinson, and Anne Bancroft as his character\u2019s secret lover, Mrs. Robinson.<\/p>\n

If Redford was too handsome to play Benjamin Braddock, Hoffman had the opposite problem.<\/p>\n

In a profile for Life magazine<\/a>, Hoffman noted that when he had to screen test with Ross, he thought, “A girl like that would never go for a guy like me in a million years.\u201d Ross agreed, admitting that when she first met the actor, he “looked about 3 feet tall …so dead serious, so humorless, so unkempt,\u201d and she thought filming with him would be \u201ca disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dustin<\/p>\n

Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross. (Photo by Embassy Pictures\/Getty Images)Embassy Pictures&sol;Getty Images<\/p>\n

In a 2015 interview with <\/a>The Canadian Press<\/a>, Hoffman called Nichols \u201ccourageous\u201d for hiring him for The Graduate. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, Mike Nichols did a very courageous thing casting me in a part that I was not right for, meaning I was Jewish,\u201d the actor said. \u201cIn fact, many of the reviews were very negative. \u2026 I was called \u2018big-nosed\u2019 in the reviews, \u2018a nasal voice.’\u201d<\/p>\n

It all turned out great for Nichols, who won an Academy Award for Best Director for the film, and Hoffman, who received an Oscar nod for Best Actor for The Graduate.<\/p>\n

This story was originally reported by Parade<\/a> on Sep 20, 2025, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Redford\u2019s long movie career included roles in Barefoot in the Park, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[26152,93,61,60,26153,26150,270,21211,26151],"class_list":{"0":"post-33053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-dustin-hoffman","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-katharine-ross","13":"tag-mike-nichols","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-robert-redford","16":"tag-the-graduate"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}