Hilarious Miscasting - What's your favorite?

Julia Roberts “Pretty Woman”

Mickey Rourke - Francesco, as in St. Francis of Assisi

I've never seen it. Just the idea makes me smile, though.

Woody Allen playing the love interest of any mildly attractive young woman.

Beanie in FG

Lucy in MAME

Glenn Close in the film version of Sunset Boulevard

The very adult actors who played teenagers in Grease.

Babs as high class hooker in NUTS. Who would pay money to fuck her? Even for a handjob.

To add insult to injury, there is an unintentionally funny scene where the trick she kills is played by Leslie Neilsen (The Naked Gun dude) he comes out in these pink panty briefs and asks "Do you have any bath salts?"

🤮

Philece Sampler as Donna Love on Another World. She was no Anna Stuart.

Dana Sparks as Victoria Gioberti on Falcon Crest. She was no Jamie Rose.

Chris Atkins as Peter Richards on Dallas. He was hot but wrong for the role of Sue Ellen's young lover. Linda looks especially haggard and mom-like that season.

Stephanie Cameron as Jennifer on DOOL.

Babs as a high class hooker in NUTS.

Who would want to PAY to fuck her? Even a hand job would be slumming it.

An unintentionally funny moment is when that the trick she kills is show in flashback. He's played by Leslie Neilsen, yes the Naked Gun guy.

He comes out on his pink panty briefs and asks "Do you have any bath salts? " 🤮

R10 I love when they’re at dinner together and Streisand says to him “I’m slidin’ off my chair…”

John Wayne as Genghis Khan

James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh

Cary Grant as Cole Porter

Really have to agree with R10.

I was too young to see it in theaters, but I remember seeing it on cable.

Even as a young gayling, my first thought was "Barbra Streisand as a hooker? REALLY?". Many years later I saw "The Owl and the Pussycat" and it only affirmed my gut reaction.

I'm not going to shit on her. She isn't ugly by any means, but she just is not a run of the mill hooker. Yes, prostitutes can be on the fugly side if they do things others won't, but this wasn't the case with this character (who apparently commands $$$).

Even as a gay man, between Julia Roberts or Streisand I know who 99% of people would pick.

Julia roberts as Harriet Tubman

My entire filmography.

Tom Cruise in the 1994 Interview with the Vampire. He gave it his best shot but he could not carry off a role clearly designed for a Bowie or Julian Sands.

Maybe not hilarious but Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in Torn Curtain, Hitchcock's behind-the-Iron-Cutain thriller. Newman played a physicist and rocket scientist.

[quote]The very adult actors who played teenagers in Grease.

OT, but I had no idea Dennis Cleveland Stewart, who played Leo "Crater-Face" Balmudo, died in 1993 of AIDS.

^1994

Pandora Spocks as Serena in 'Bewitched'. Totally miscast.

[quote].R3 Woody Allen playing the love interest of any mildly attractive young woman.

Many women truly ARE attracted to men who make them laugh. When they’re his contemporaries (like Diane Keaton) it’s believable.

When it’s girls half his age it’s not.

James Franco, in a movie called Queen of the Desert. He plays an Edwardian era British gent and he's every bit as miscast as you would think based on that description

Jared Leto in Basil (a movie no one saw). He plays a Victorian Englishman and stinks up the place.

Keanu as Jonathan Harker in "Bram Stoker's Dracula."

The Wolfman:

Petite, erudite, English, sophisticated Claude Rains plays the father of large, lumbering, American Lon Chaney, Jr.

Dustin Hoffman as Matthew Broderick's father AND Sean Connery's son in "Family Business."

Preposterous.

Lorraine Bracco as a scientist in Medicine Man.

[quote]R17 TORN CURTAIN: Newman played a physicist and rocket scientist.

And opposite him, Julie Andrews tried to play a woman.

Hitchcock hated her in it.

Ava Gardner as Lorne Greene's daughter in Earthquake

A cross-eyed Karen Black as an airplane-flying stewardess in Airport 1975

Stockard Channing as teenager in Grease

Helen Lawson. In anything.

Sean Connery posing as Japanese in You Only Live Twice. His height and build would have made it hilarious without the Scottish accent.

Sean Connery was fairly unconvincing in anything he did. A Movie Star, not a great actor.

Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Call girl? Former hick? No way.

Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing

Jack Lemmon in Hamlet

Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil

So true, R32!

R34 owns the thread so far.

Melinda Dillon's perm in A Christmas Story

Not necessarily hilarious because I thought he was excellent but Alex Wolff as the son of Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne in Hereditary was a head-scratcher.

Harvey Keitel in The Last Temptation of Christ.

Meryl Streep in many of the movies she's been in. I think some famous critic said (after her decent turn in Postcards from the Edge, a role which needed someone who projected a wildness Streep never naturally did) she's essentially made a career out of being miscast.

The amount of Jewish women the unbelievably WASPy La Streep has played is hilarious. Mike Nichols thought she was the universal actress, apparently.

The only roles I think she was right in were her star making early ones: Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer, Manhattan, Sophie's Choice.

A number of other, lesser widely acclaimed but just as skilled actresses would have made more sense in many of the roles she's played. For example, Postcards needed a younger actress who might not have that much technical talent, but a raw screen presence and ability to play a realistic darkly comedic fuck-up. I once saw Jamie Lee Curtis suggested on a thread here and loved that idea.

Mamma Mia (that glurgefest) needed a younger woman in the lead as well. She might be the only actress in history to be regularly cast for roles she's too fucking old for past the age of 40!

[quote]r29 Helen Lawson. In anything

C’mon. She was good in “Sunny Lady” and “Hit the Sky.”

“Westward Ho” was no great shakes, but who COULD have made that sexploitation trash work?

Meryl Streep is Jewish, I think

Keanu Reeves in Dangerous Liaisons

Diana Ross in "The Wiz."

Suzanne Somers in 'She's the Sheriff'

Cameron Diaz in "Gangs of New York"

Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight"

AnnE Hathaway in "Les Miserables"

Tom Bosley in "Murder She Wrote"

Ali MacGraw in "Dynasty"

Joan Crawford in "The Secret Storm"

Mickey Rooney — Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love"

Agree with Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York

R39 - that was Pauline Kael who wrote that. Cue the Pauline Kael was a cunt troll. My theory about Mike Nichols and Streep is that she was his doppelganger.

Toni Collette should have had the lead in Mamma Mia. She can sing, and she looks like she could be Amanda Seyfried's mom.

Word is Diaz got the part in Gangs of New York via the casting couch (thanks, Harvey!). Scorsese didn't want her in the role.

Gabrielle Carteris as teenage journalist Andrea Zuckerman.

As a Victorian streetwalker in From Hell, Heather Graham is neck-and-neck with Diaz for worst miscasting of a modern hottie as a 19th Century woman.

^^^ in Beverly Hills 90010. Sorry

56 year old Arlene Francis as a pregnant woman in The Thrill of it All.

Tom Hanks in Elvis. He deserves a Razzie for playing Colonel Parker.

Natalie Wood in West Side Story.

Leo is miscast in Gangs of NY as well. Should have been Marky Mark - who at least looked right for the part.

Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. His scenes really take you out of it.

R60 Except for the “acting” part of the role.

Marky Mark? Really?

Some modern actresses just can't convincingly play pre-20th Century roles. Julia Roberts stunk up the joint in Mary Reilly.

r55, she was awful in that. Her cockney accent was sooooo bad. And her hair always looked freshly shampooed and curled, even though she was supposed to be living on the streets

Marky Mark as an astronaut in Planet of the Apes.

R64 - I thought Julia passed as a colleen in Michael Collins.

Elizabeth Taylor opposite Warren Beatty in The Only Game in Town. She looked short, fat, old, dumpy, and garish.

Charity Rahmer as Belle on Days of Our Lives. She lasted what, three weeks?

Isn't Michael Collins set in the 1910s?

Michael Collins is a 1996 biographical period drama film written and directed by Neil Jordan and starring Liam Neeson as the Irish freedom fighter and politician Michael Collins, who was a leading figure in the early-20th-century Irish struggle for independence against Britain.

So, not a pre-20th Century role for Julia, then.

Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in The World is Not Enough. And in real life her caveman of a hubby studies cold fusion when he’s not harnessing the healing powers of cancer.

From some angles, Jeremy Renner looks like he has Down Syndrome, yet we're supposed to believe he's a a math genius in Arrival.

Madonna in Evita.

Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball. Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly. Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson.

Nicole Kidman as Human Woman.

Patti LuPone in Evita

Bette Davis in Mrs. Skeffington. An ageless beauty who all the men wanted was not a believable look on her. Merle Oberon, the original choice for the role, would have made more sense.

Bette Midler as Jacqueline Susann in "Isn't She Great." Didn't look like her; she pretty much was being herself, instead of embodying the spirit of the Valley Of The Doll author. The TV movie version with Michele Lee was much better.

50-something year old Sandra Bullock as a pregnant lady in “Bird Box.”

R28 I felt bad for Ava having to try to pass as the daughter of someone only 7 years older than her - but was she miscast, or was Lorne? Her father should have been played by an older man. She was only in her early 50s.

Wasn't Lucille Ball also played a new mother in Yours, Mine, And Ours, at around age 56.

*playing

Mimi Rogers as Streisand's younger sister in "Mirror Has Two Faces".

I'm a fan of hers, and she did get an Oscar nom for it. But I could not take Diahann Carroll seriously in 'Claudine'. She's meant to be this Harlem welfare mother of 6 kids living in poverty, but Carroll just screams wealthy and patrician. She's very mannered, her movements are svelte and trained, and out comes that beautifully eloquent diction of hers trying to pull off this "po' folks" street dialogue. I remember thinking 'this bitch has never been near a crack house in her life, and it shows.'

Fresh faced 19 year old Jennifer Lawrence in 'American Hustle' as a long-suffering wife and mother of two didn't really wash for me either. She was also a bit young for that mop movie.

R87 Your point is well taken but whey would she have been near a crack house in the 70s?

Not to take anything away from Diahann Carroll, but man I wish Diana Sands had lived to play that role as initially cast. Sands was a damn good actress and there is precious little of her on film. Not only should she have been nominated for The Landlord but she should have won over Helen Hayes. Claudine could have elevated her to a new level. Her death was a huge loss.

Haha, r87, r89. I felt the same way, too. So did the people who eventually cast her. Diana Sands was dying, and insisted that Diahann replace her. Diahann eventually convinced them that she could play Claudine, stating that she grew up in Harlem, and was well-acquainted with women like Claudine, basically saying "I know Claudine. She lived in my building. There were Claudines in my family."

Sean Combs (Puff Daddy or P. Diddy) in Raisin In The Sun. I know he tried hard, and I enjoyed everyone else's performances, but I couldn't get used to him playing Walter Lee Younger, not after seeing Sidney Poitier and Danny Glover portray him in the earlier filmed versions.

All three leads in COLD MOUNTAIN - too old for their parts, and Zellwegger's character in the book is mix-race. There's nothing quite like the Weinstein casting office. Miramax films are a library of bad casting choices.

85-year old Judi Dench playing Shakespeare's 55 y/o wife in "All is True".

"Jack Lemmon in HAMLET"

Well, he's only in it for a few minutes as Marcellus, but he certainly sticks out like a sore thumb. I'm sure he was cast as a "name" to help sell the film, but is anyone going to see a 4-hour HAMLET to see Lemmon?

R92, I thought Zellweger was terrible. Don't know why she got the Oscar for that (and I say this as someone who liked her in other things)

Ralph Bellamy at almost 80 playing FDR in his 50s, in The Winds Of War.

I'm with r77. Nicole just looks too weird these days. In Being the Ricardos I couldn't get over how waxy her face looked

[Quote]Ralph Bellamy at almost 80 playing FDR in his 50s, in The Winds Of War.

R96 You're right, but FDR looked pretty old in his 50s. He was 51 when this was filmed.

Katharine Hepburn as a Chinese peasant. (Actually it's a powerful, moving WWII-era film, but still, strange today.)

R79, but Bette was the better actress.

R98 True. I just remember when I saw it, I was in high school, we had been studying FDR and WWII, and Bellamy looked very old in certain scenes.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Margaret Thatcher.

I always nominated this one in these kind of threads. Kim Stanley in Frances. She was too fat to play the mother of Frances Farmer who was an advocate for healthy eating. Celeste Holm looked much closer to the real Lillian Farmer.

My favorite miscasting is Bette Davis in All About Eve. As many of us know, Claudette Colbert was supposed to play that role, but a back injury forced her to drop out. Bette Davis took on the role, and made history with it. Perhaps we would be saying today that Claudette Colbert was miscast had she actually played Eve.

Oops, MARGO.

OP, believe it or not I looked this up a couple weeks ago. Vaugn was born in 1932. He would have been 25 when this was filmed in May 1958. He did look too old for the part though, I agree.

Angelina Jolie as Marianne Pearl - total blackface

Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone - blackface + prosthetic nose

Gross

Susan Hayward in I'll Cry Tomorrow. Sure she could act the part but her singing is god-awful.

Courteney Cox as Monica in Friends. Ridiculous!

Jess Walton as Jill Foster Abbott.

James Stewart in Ziegfeld Girl. Cast as Lana Turner's working-class Brooklyn boyfriend who becomes a gangster (maybe? I forget). It was a part for John Garfield. Jimmy even tried an accent or at least biting off his consonants.

Streisand was a much prettier hooker in Nuts. By then she had control of the lighting and the camera angles. She dressed tastefully. (Not so pretty in a white schmatta in the jailhouse scenes.) I almost believed her acting.

Halle Berry as a crack addict in Jungle Fever.

Melanie Griffith as a Hasidic Jew in some abomination.

Winona Ryder in The Age of Innocence.

R114 I think she was most good.

Rita Hayworth as a downtrodden blowzy housewife in The Story on Page One. Rita is much too elegant.

Jennifer Jones in the remake of A FAREWELL TO ARMS, with Rock Hudson. She was too old and mannered in the role of the nurse.

Will Farrell in “Bewitched”.

Lens Dunham in anything.

Madonna in any comedy.

Humourless tart.

Lana Turner as Diane de Poitiers in Diane. She looked and acted way too contemporary

Doris Day in Midnight Lace. She tried but she was playing opposite Rex Harrison — all her meaning hand wringing and black lace just didn’t cut it

Seen it several times to TRY to like her but I keep hearing how much is that doggie in the window like a distant foghorn

Mel Gibson in ANYTHING. Way before his public rants … but then he’s the Passion of the christ ?

Pint-sized Tom Cruise casting himself as the 6'5" behemoth Jack Reacher. Quelle horreur!!

Michael J Fox in that vietnam Movie where the general (I don’t think it’s Michael but it Doesn’t matter ) goes on an insane killing spree.

Michael is too family tied for this part

For those of us who lived through Vietnam and the aftermath where we found out the truth sortof (post freedom of information act) the ENTIRE WAR WAS SN INSANE BLOOD BATH

Donna Reed as Sacagawea

Thread over!!!

[quote]Keanu as Jonathan Harker in "Bram Stoker's Dracula."

I agree that Keanu was miscast, but he was so fucking beautiful it didn't matter.

Love him but....Rock Hudson as a Brit in Something of Value. And Dame Wendy Hiller was supposed to be his sister - lol

Rosie O'Donnell as Betty Rubble. She's ok, but I wish they had gotten someone cuter.

Susan Hayward as Tartar princess Bortai in The Conqueror.

Anne Baxter as Egyptian princess Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments, but thank God she was cast in this part!

R129, everyone in The Conqueror would qualify!

Glenda Jackson in The Patricia Neal Story. Glenda uses her usual Brit accent which is wrong for Patricia.

Jackson used her normal accent no matter who she played. Back in the 80s I saw her on stage in London in a play whose two main characters were Eva Braun and Clara Petacci (Mussolini's mistress). Jackson played Braun with her British accent.

R121 How Much Is That Doggie In The Window was sung by Patti Page, not Doris Day.

Biblical epics are a treasure trove for this sort of thing. The King Of Kings has Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus (prompting the joke “I was a teenaged Jesus), Rip Torn as Judas, and Robert Ryan as John The Baptist. The Greatest Story Ever Told has Max con Sydow as Jesus, Jose Ferrer as Herod, and John Wayne as a Roman Centaurian. And don’t get me started on The Ten Commandments…

[quote]Doris Day in Midnight Lace.

Her breakdown scene at the top of the stairs is always good for a chuckle.

Aunt BEA! HELP ME! AAAAACK! AAAA-AAAAACK!

R13, Jill Clayburgh played a hooker in the TV movie Hustling that starred Lee Remick. She was a credible hooker and that’s acting!! My mother thought Clayburgh was miscast in An Unmarried Woman because she wasn’t attractive. She thought that they had her dance in her underwear as a way to put her over to the audience

Most hookers aren't pretty. Not the ones on the streets. The prettier ones are escorts and such. But look at hooker mug shots and tell me that some of them aren't dogs. Straight guys don't care - as long as they can get their dicks sucked they don't care what a woman looks like.

I don't know about Jeffrey Hunter. He didn't disgrace himself. Maybe he was a little dull, but it's not an easy role. If you think about how miscast Robert Wagner or Tony Perkins or Richard Beymer or Pat Boone or Roddy McDowall would have been, Jeffrey Hunter seems positively brilliant.

Little Keanu

^ His # needs to be retired.

“But I will rise there with so full a glory That I will dazzle all the eyes of France, Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.”....

The daughter in European Vacation. Most bizarre casting ever

Brad Pitt, Seven Years in Tibet

Not really miscasting because he pulled it off, but Frank Sinatra in those old MGM musicals where he was cast as a shy young guy, no experience with girls or sex.

Ellen DeGeneres in Mr. Wrong.

R124 That was Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War. In the De Palma doc on HBO, he said that Sean Penn was method toward Fox the entire movie, aka hated him. During the courtroom scene he whispered “television actor” into Fox’s ear before Fox’s monologue.

The Barbra as hooker discussion continued. She has played 3 if you include For Pete's Sake. I found her credible as one in The Owl and the Pussycat because she was tough and sexy as a street walker but by the time of Nuts her age seemed a problem. Anne Twomey in the play had a patrician elegance which matched the idea that Claudia is a Park Avenue quality sex worker though she works alone and not for a house or madam. Barbra is too earthy a type to play patrician elegance - you can't take the Brooklyn out of the girl. Debra Winger was initially attached to do the film and while younger than Barba, and let's face it, a better actress, she too would have been wrong as also too earthy. The bigger problem in Nuts is that you never believe that Barbra is in fact nuts.

Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor in a tv movie 'Liz and Dick'

Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly

Jennifer Love Hewitt as Audrey Hepburn.

Okay, r151 just won.

That black woman who played Anne Boleyn

Tara Reid as an anthropologist in Alone in the Dark

Historical figures casting disasters:

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Olivia de Havilland in "Feud" (although I have to admit, she gave her all for the great line, "Help! I'm trapped in a small, private elevator!")

Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton in "American Crime Story: Impeachment."

John Cusack as Richard Nixon in "Lee Daniels's The Butler"

Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip in "The Crown"

Viola Davis as Michelle Obama.

Cicely Tyson as Coretta Scott King. Sorry, Cicely.

[Quote]Viola Davis as Michelle Obama.

Excellent example, r156.

It burns me up that Viola took umbrage with the critics on point assessment of her performance as Michelle. Everything was fine when they praised her for her performances in other roles. But as soon as they dragged her for her awful turn as Michelle Obama, she dismissed them as worthless. Her ego, really!

Michelle Obama has a lightness to her (at least in public) that Viola is not capable of portraying. She's just too serious.

Barbra Streisand in "A STAR IS BORN". Sorry, I never believed she was this up-and-coming rock-n-roll chick.

Barbra Streisand in 'YENTL'. No matter how she tried, Streisand at 40 never pulled off looking like a young male scholar in his early 20s.

JImmie Dean in anything. Gawd he was such a terrible effeminate lil super faggot.

Thank you R134. Duly noted

r96 I'm guessing he was cast for nostalgia sake, since he had played FDR 20 years prior in "Sunrise at Campobello."

R164 Probably, as well as him being a good actor who everyone knew could play the role. Actually if you remember, the whole cast was too old.

Jerssica Lange as Joan Crawford. No resemblance at all and didn't capture any aspect of Crawford to me.

Jessica has small eyes. Joan had massive hippopotamus eyes that were one of her trademarks. She didn’t resemble Joan at all. And she and Susan were both about a decade too old to play Bette and Joan at that stage in their lives.

I feel that way about Diana Ross as Billie Holiday. She bore little physical resemblance to Billie and her voice, while serviceable singing those songs, wasn’t anything like Billie either. But at the same time, you can’t take your eyes off her.

Lee Remick as Margaret Sullavan in Haywire. Sullavan had a distinctive husky voice but Lee doesn't do it.

Clearly, I am in the minority, but Mel Gibson in Braveheart. The scene where he returns and comes riding up with long flowing locks and a weathered, old, lined face in a kilt. Uh, no.

R167 I don't get Hollywood's insistence on casting older actors as younger characaters, real or fictional. The actors really don't look "younger" as some people insist they do. Each decade, people move differently. It's not even faces - you can tell most people ages, from the back, by how they walk.

R170 sometimes a movie won't get financed unless there's a big name attached in a lead role. And since in the case of Braveheart, Gibson, directed and produced, he got to be the star. His Scottish accent was al so ...deplorable.

R17, truly bottom drawer Hitchcock.

R172Commercial movies are mostly a young-ish director's game. In his mid-60s Hitchcock seemed desperate to stay relevant, doing others' bidding and ditching Bernard Herrmann's score (he asked Herrmann to make it more pop, Herrmann didn't comply), as well as casting younger, box-office stars.

Donna Reed as Miss Ellie.

R169, I agree with you

I adore her but Elizabeth Taylor was not right for Maggie the Cat. No. She really wasn't.

R176 She was better than most people who have played it.

r176, that's one of the movies I think she's actually good in.

If you had said "BUtterfield-8" I would have agreed with you.

Liz was definitely better than Natalie Wood, who did a television remake.

Natalie was better than Liz. Robert Wagner was the weak link in the TV remake

R168 Shelley Winters looked a lot more like Margaret Sullavan

Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin. Jeez.

R181 What??

Janet Gaynor in the original "A Star Is Born". In all the other versions (for all their other faults) , you at least knew why the female lead was on their way to stardom. Not so much with Janet.

But the all-time example of miscasting has to be Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner as brothers (!) in "The Mountain". Spencer looked more like Wagner's grandfather. Who the hell thought making them BROTHERS would be a good idea?

And let's not forget Liberace as the romantic lead in "Sincerely Yours".

31 year old june allison as 15 year old josephine march. little women

[quote]Janet Gaynor in the original "A Star Is Born". In all the other versions (for all their other faults) , you at least knew why the female lead was on their way to stardom. Not so much with Janet.

And yet in real life, she *was* a star, who had already won an Academy Award, and would be nominated for another Oscar for A Star Is Borb...

Or A Star Is Born

r185, good choice. Janet Leigh was 10 years younger than Allyson but was playing her OLDER sister

You'd love June in Too Young to Kiss then.

Cynthia Potter is a skilled pianist trying to catch the eye of concert promoter Eric Wainwright. Wainwright, however, is currently only looking for young talent. To meet his criteria, Potter (in her 20s), masquerades as her own fictional younger sister, a 14-year-old "Molly" Potter.

june was also pregnant

June wasn't 31 in the film. She was more like 29 or 30, because the film was held back for release from 1948 until '49 (possibly to make it one of MGM's Silver Anniversary pictures). Katharine Hepburn was 26, Saoirse Ronan was 25. Winona Ryder was younger: 23. The audience in those days had very little way of knowing the ages of actors, unless they had an almanac or some other reference book that happened to list their ages. (They wouldn't have found June Allyson's real age, anyway, because the studio passed her off as younger.)

r192, people weren't blind, I'm sure they knew she wasn't 15. She looked ridiculous. (And I actually feel the same way about Hepburn)

Diana Ross in The Wiz.

Geez break out the mothballs with R184

Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name.

Julie Harris, who portrayed a 12-year-old tomboy in The Member Of The Wedding. She was 24 when she played her on Broadway, and 26 when she did the film.

Joan Rivers and Melissa Rivers as Joan Rivers and Melissa Rivers in Tears and Laughter: The Joan Rivers and Melissa Rivers Story.

On the contrary, Julie Harris in Member of the Wedding is a prime example of superb eccentric casting.

Spencer Tracy in [italic] It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World [/italic] . He was a pro and did creditably; but . . . for me, he just doesn't really fit. I wonder if, at some early early early stage of the project, they had fantasies of getting the aged Chaplin for that role.

They could have used George Burns, R200. Unlike Chaplin, he'd have taken it.

R193 It was the 9th highest grossing film of the year, so I guess "people" didn't mind. Jo is never played in movies by a teenager, never mind a 15 year old. By the end of the story she's supposed to be 25, anyway.

R200, see I thought Spencer Tracy was perfect in his role. Because he brought his image and a reputation built over decades to that character. I thought the whole movie was damned near perfect. I loved the casting. I don't think Chaplin or Burns would have done the character justice. It would have been a totally different movie if either of them had been cast.

I can just hear Gracie Allen in the Selma Diamond voiceover role as Burns' wife, telling him about their daughter...

Also, R79, like Meryl Streep did in SOPHIE'S CHOICE, she was able to convince the audience that she was beautiful. Sophie was described as a beautiful woman in the William Styron novel. Streep is not a classic beauty, but she had this haunted but ethereal quality in her performance that made people believe that she was beautiful. Bette behaved like the spoiled, pampered debutante the character was. Hair and makeup helped too. I love Merle Oberon, but I don't know if she would have been as compelling in the role.

R202, a lot of these movies made money. So what?

r150 She was terrible!

Clint Eastwood in anything he's done in the past ten years....

Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls. The dance scene in the Havana interlude was ridiculous and he tried, God love 'em, but he cannot sing.

That girl who played Sonja on Mama's Family.

Cheryl Ladd was simply awful as Grace Kelly. I think that fellow Angel and equally awful thespian Jaclyn Smith helped her prep for the part.

Speaking of Jaclyn, she was an atrocious Florence Nightingale.

That should have been Gene Kelly in Guys and Dolls, but he was off making An American in Paris.

R211, Jaclyn was fucking terrible as Florence Nightingale.

Weirdly, sitcom icon Elizabeth Montgomery was a smashing Lizzie Borden.

Nicole Kidman as the neurosurgeon in Days of Thunder. When the movie was filmed she as 231

R212 Guys and Dolls came out in 1955. An American in Paris came out in 1951.

DL even had a thread about this: Miss Anne Baxter as a Mexican cantina owner in Walk on the Wild Side. Her Mexican accent was all over the place.

It turns out she was cast because her agent was also the producer. Double dipping there.

^ Almost everyone in Walk on the Wild Side was miscast.

Shelley Long as a hooker in Night Shift

Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

sorry to barge in with a 2022 reference -

right now there is tons of discussion over claire danes on her new FX series. Everyone hates her character. Shes a stereotypical bitch who is only important to the plot because she disappears and you see her acting like a cunt in a lot of flashbacks. Avoid reading about the twist but you eventually get an episode from her perspective and its clear why she took the part and why she is perfect for it. and around that time you find out why another character is narrating the series which till then doesnt make much sense either.

Barbra Streisand in Yentl.

Nicole Kidman was 231? My, she looked good...

Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. Ugh.

R200 Come on...Charlie Chaplin as tough, grizzled Captain Culpeper, chief of detectives of the Santa Rosita Police Department?! Tracy was perfect.

And yes, Tracy was the first choice. He was the favorite of Stanley Kramer, who also cast him in Inherit The Wind, Judgment At Nuremberg, and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. He also wanted to cast Tracy in Ship Of Fools (as the doctor), but Tracy couldn't do it.

Agree, R225!

R225 For Ship of Fools, do you mean the Oskar Werner part?

R155 Edie was awful, but it would have been impossible in Hollywood to do the character correctly, for the exact same reason I keep getting banned for making fun of her here.

^ Yes she was 231 that's why she's had so much plastic surgery! No, that was a typo ha ha-- I meant to say she was 23 and I thought that casting was ridiculous.

Alec Guiness as Professor Godbole. How could two masters like Guiness and Lean create such an abomination.

Hilary Swank in The Black Dahlia. It feels weird she's portraying someone who is supposed to be this sexy femme fatale.

Someone helping the protagonist is attacked by the killer and presumed dead but they recover just in time to save the protagonist when we think they are doomed. Locations like cliffs and rooftops add to the climactic drama.

oops wrong thread.

Hilary Swank in "The Affair of the Necklace." She's another one of those actresses who can't play pre-20th century characters.

There's an old movie The Pride and the Passion that came out in 1957 and it was about the Napoleonic wars. Frank Sinatra in a period movie. Dear God what a fuckin disaster. Cary Grant and Sophia Loren rounded out the cast. A true shit mess.

Sinatra was only good in of-the-moment projects, and once he fell out of cultural relevancy, he couldn't even do that. His last few films were terrible and he was terrible in them.

Nepo baby Cody Horn, who played the love interest in the first Magic Mike. She was so terrible, she couldn't even convincingly play someone who found Channing Tatum at his hottest attractive.

R232, it seems like 50% of thrillers end with someone dangling off a roof or a cliff

[quote][R55], she was awful in that. Her cockney accent was sooooo bad. And her hair always looked freshly shampooed and curled, even though she was supposed to be living on the streets

Not to mention the other whores (most notably the late Katrin Cartlidge) were done up to look extra-smelly and bedraggled in comparison.

Daryl Hannah in Sense8.

All I saw was a 90 year old with too much facework wearing something appropriate for someone 1/4 of her age.

Whoopi taking on a Jewish last name while claiming anti-Semitism doesn't exist and there's no such thing as racism against Jewish people because they're all white to her

[quote]R205 Sophie was described as a beautiful woman in the William Styron novel.

Yes. The author imagined Ursula Andress as this character when he was writing it.

r225 r226 Naturally if you've bonded with Spencer Tracy as Capt. Culpepper (note spelling), anyone else in the role will seem wrong. Yes, I agree: Chaplin would never be able to play Spencer Tracy as Capt. Culpepper as well as Spencer Tracy could play Spencer Tracey as Capt. Culpepper. But Chaplin playing Chaplin as Capt. Culpepper might have given a more successful performance than did Spencer Tracy playing Spencer Tracy as Capt. Culpepper, considering the film as a whole. Tracy did well; others might have done better.

R243 Okay, you win. If somehow Chaplin, in his 70s, would have come out of exile and returned to the US to work in Hollywood, under the direction of someone else for the first time in decades, and if his character was English, or if he could do an American accent, he could have been well cast as a California police detective.

Southern belle Kassie Depaiva as a half-Asian seductress Blair Daimler!

Hear, hear, R230!

Th entire cast of the 1948 musical THE PIRATE - Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Gladys Cooper(!), Walter Slezak and others all playing Spaniards.

R243 The problem with Tracy in that film was he didn't quite fit with the ensemble of other performers. They by and large were actors of broad comedy like Silvers and Winters. Tracy through and through was a master of sophisticated light comedy. But he tried to play the role in a broad fashion that was right for the film but not right for Tracy. "A chocolate fudge sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top."

R248 he wasn't supposed to "fit in" he was the Police.

R249 Sort of the point. He nonetheless tried to fit in. Who can forget the licking dog. Didn't work.

I remember when the film It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was on TV a long time ago. I heard my mother laughing. I went into the room and she was laughing really hard at Spencer Tracy in a scene near the end. I never forgot that.

^^Yay! Spencer wins!

I saw Confidential Agent with Lauren Bacall. I understand why she tried to get out of it, she was not right for it at all. She competes with Madonna for worst British accent of all time.

John Wayne in “The Sons of Katie Elder.” JW was 58 years old, playing the oldest of the four sons. The youngest son was played by a 22-year-old Michael Anderson Jr. The Duke looked like he was wearing a girdle.

Katie must have been quite a woman to be pushing out kids for 36 years!

Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous. Yeah, I know he won an Oscar for it...

R255, I totally agree on this one! His accent was atrocious. Manuel the Portugee was not believable.

R3 wins.

Woody was hiding in plain sight

Back in the days of the studios calling all the shots, if a star was hot, they cast him in everything whether it was a good fit or not. My most favorite miscasting was Tony Curtis in the

Tony Curtis in the Black Shield of Falworth..."I shall go to the castle of my foddah! LOL! In fact Tony Curtis was such a contemporary actor that playing in period films did not work well for him. His turn in Spartacus, and in Vikings along with Kirk Douglas who was also woefully miscast, sealed the deal. Terrible.

Tony always sounded like he was from The Bronx, whether he was playing a medieval Brit, ancient Roman, etc.

The list of actors who are too contemporary to play any kind of period role is a long one. There are actors today who shouldn't even play anything that takes place before the 1970s.

The argument abolut being "too contemporary" never made total sense to me. Are we really to assume people in earlier times walked around speaking in flowery accents or looking correct in historical costumes? In other words I think it's more about what we accept theatrically as being historical, rather than what is really historical. Recently I was watching interviews with people who survived the Titanic. They talked more or less the way we talk now. But in the most recent Titanic movie, at least some of the cast was walking around posing and speaking in a fake "historical" manner.

Harvey Keitel in The Last Temptation of Christ seems like he just got off the train from Brooklyn.

R263 I think it has a lot to do with accents. I know what you mean, but - how do we know what someone acted like in the time of Christ? Did everybody act like "biblical' movie characters, or vaguely Shakespearean? Did they talk like Charlton Heston?

Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall. Marshall was light skinned and it played a part in his narrative. This was stunt casting and it didn’t really work for me. And I love Sidney.

R264, I get what you are saying but I REALLY doubt they sounded like they were from Brooklyn.

Outside of the ages of most of the principle cast being in their 20s. Grease was perfectly cast.

R266 I get that.

Joaquin Phoenix as a philosophy professor in Irrational Man. See Marky Mark in Planet of the Apes.

Kevin Spacey and Ashley Judd as Cole and Lynda Porter. He was too old and she was too young.

[r270] apparently Kevin Kline was so miscast that you thought he was Kevin Soacey

The Kevin Spacey miscast was for Bobby Darin. What excrement.

Oh. Beyonce as Etta James in Cadillac Records. I liked the movie but she was not right for that part. Etta hated it.

My bad r271. Kline it is…still miscast though.

And it’s not SOAucey but SPacey 😝🙄

I thought Moulin ROuge was a disaster. Ewan McGregor Nicole Kidman, all of it.

But was it miscast r274, that’s the subject.

R275 Actually, HILARIOUS miscasting is the subject, and for the most part, that's not what the thread turned out to be about.

Fortunately not cast. It would have been a disaster.

[quote] Tony Curtis in the Black Shield of Falworth..."I shall go to the castle of my foddah! LOL! In fact Tony Curtis was such a contemporary actor that playing in period films did not work well for him. His turn in Spartacus, and in Vikings along with Kirk Douglas who was also woefully miscast, sealed the deal. Terrible.

Only in hindsight. At the time these movies were produced, apparently nobody was listening to the accents. Everyone in Falworth speaks American. In fact, every Hollywood movie set in England was delivered in American. And the line is "Yonda lies the castle of my foddah."

Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy. I get that Portman is an expert crier--that's what she does in every movie--but she is incapable of expressing very much aside from that.

Helen Mirren in that Catherine the Great miniseries she did a few years ago. She was 73 years old.

She was 73 playing a 30 year old. It was bizarre.

Nicole Kidman in Bewitched. She’s no Liz Montgomery.

R279, I agree! That was a real shitmess. Natalie as Jackie Kennedy absolutely did not work. In fact, in every movie the adult Natalie Portman is in, she is the same. She has very little range and is not a good actor.

R282, none of her performances impressed me. In Black Swan, I think Mila Kunis is way more interesting than her.

But Jackie Kennedy had the personality of a robot.

Nothing beats Michael Jackson as Captain EO at Disneyland!

When he first appeared on screen, the audiences literally broke out laughing at him. And this was at the height of his fame, before any of the kiddie-diddling scandals.

R279 Have you seen the film? She's excellent in it and most people agree to that.

Linda Blair and Eve Plumb should have swapped roles in their ‘Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic/Runaway’ films.

Pretty much all of the leads in the 2004 Phantom Of The Opera film adaptation were wrong for their roles, in my opinion, except for maybe Patrick Wilson. The film should have been made earlier and with a different director, but could possibly have been salvaged to a degree with better casting, especially ones with better singing voices. Gerard Butler was especially bad in the title role.

KD Lang in the laughable Eye Of The Beholder with Ewan MacGregor and Ashley Judd. The film is a mess but I cannot imagine why anyone else wouldn't have been a better choice for Lang given her awful performance.

R286, yes I saw the film. All I can say is they got the clothes right. I thought Natalie was horribly miscast.

Natalie was not miscast but she's a very limited actress incapable of any expressive acting, which fit the character. The film was an interesting visual recreation of those times.

21-year-old Jane Powell as the sister of 51-year-old Fred Astaire in 1951's Royal Wedding.

Maybe Gregory Peck was miscast as Captain Ahab in Moby Dick (1956), though he wasn't terrible.

Kristen Stewart as Snow White & as Princess Diana.

43-year-old Leslie Howard and 34-year-old Norma Shearer as Romeo & Juliet in the 1936 MGM film.

Peyton List as Aileen Wuornos

R291, in spite of your insistence I will maintain my opinion. You liked it. I did not. For me Natalie was the worst Jackie I've seen and I have seen several. YOu are entitled to your opinion. You won't change mine, and you can't make me feel bad about it. THis is not about right and wrong, it's about taste. Your taste doesn't reflect my taste in this instance.

A limited screen actress? I'd like to see Meryl Streep play a stripper.

Paul Newman seemed miscast in The Prize, a pseudo-Hitchcock 60's thriller with a lot of dry humor (written by Ernest Lehman, the screenwriter of North By Northwest). Newman is good in the dramatic parts but the humor seems more suited to Cary Grant.

Paul Newman wasn’t good at comedy.

Another comedy Newman was miscast in was Rally Round The Flag, Boys (1957). He had very little talent as a comedian.

He had a dry, smug sense of humor. I saw him on a few talk shows in his old age. There is something about him I just don't like.

Ali Macgraw in Dynasty. Good lord was she terrible!

Marjorie Main as Dorothy in Wizard of Oz

Even worse in THE WINDS OF WAR, R303, as Natalie Jastrow. So glad they got Jane Seymour for WAR AND REMEMBRANCE!!!

[quote] "Helen Lawson. In anything."

R29 = Neely O'Hara

Ian Levine, still playing a barely legal Twink, getting fucked by his scoutmaster, or step dad at 30.

Natalie Portman may be limited and when she's bad, she's bad. And I don't particularly like the chick but for each of her Oscar nominated roles she knocked it out of the fucking park.

Natalie Portman has to be cast just right: she works playing tragic little rich girls (Jackie O, the ballerina in Black Swan, Anne Boleyn). She doesn't work at all in any other type of role. She sucked in Closer, even though it was a fantastic part and she looked great.

There was a rumor 10-15 years ago that she was being looked at to play Edie Sedgwick. She probably could have knocked that out of the park, too.

The dumbest thing about Closer was Natalie playing a stripper who keeps her top on while she's working.

Joan Allen as John Travolta's wife in Face/Off.

70 year old Laim Neeson as Philip Marlowe.

*Liam

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Joe Six-Pack (except on Mars) in "Total Recall."

Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in "The World is Not Enough."

Also from Face-Off (and I agree about Joan Allen, who seemed so out of place in that movie it was likea Chekhov character wandered into a Marvel Comics Universe film):

Fat blobby John Travolta and muscular, trim Nic Cage as two men who can pass for each other merely with plastic surgery on their faces.

Portman was excellent in Closer.

there is a scene in Nuts that has Barbara going on about her powers of seduction and ability to turn a man out. Ridiculous.

[quote]r311 Joan Allen as John Travolta's wife in Face/Off.

I love that gloriously cheesy movie!

Justin Timberlake in Wonder Wheel

The character of disc jockey Lenny Shepherd in "The Bell Jar" is a strapping, lusty cowboy. In the movie he is played by shlubby, balding Robert Klein.

Remember the abuse Reese Witherspoon got for playing a sexy babe that two guys were fighting over?

Not a movie but a play, the 2005 revival of "A streetcar named desire" starring John C Reilly as Stanley.....whattheeverlastingfuck?

I've seen men commit murder over women far less attractive than Reese Witherspoon

Katharine Hepburn in Undercurrent. She plays a dowdy spinster who gets a society makeover. Rather than being insecure about her appearance you can imagine saying Hepburn saying Fuck You to those shallow sophisticates who dress ridiculously.

Rep 121: And as I remember in an interview Page said the producer of her recordings was too cheap to hire backup singers. Some of her 45s were credited to Patti Page, Patti Page and Patti Page. In the same interview she said she didn't get why La Midler had multitracked vocals on Old Cape Cod. Some people are just whimsy and camp challenged!

Steven Fry in Gosford Park. Maybe not a miscast as much as a misdirection. He plays it like a comedy while the film is a drama. His presence is jarring in an otherwise brilliant film.

18 or 19 year old Shirley Temple cast as 42 year old Myrna Lou's "sister". She couldn't admit she'd given birth to a "love child". Look what happened to Ingrid Bergman! Or their parents practiced the rhythm method and missed a beat. The Tracy/Wagner discrepancy could be explained: Their mother was a hillbilly who had Tracy @ 11 and had Wagner @ 55.

Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor and whatshername as poor Portuguese-American pizza parlour workers in Mystic Pizza. They looked about as Portuguese as Björk.

Bette Midler in Jinxed

Martin Stort in Clifford

Ron Moss, at age 34, playing the son of 41 year old John McCook on The Bold and the Beautiful. But his acting 'made up' for it.

Julie Andrews looks peak-frau in r17’s pic.

That movie is so boring on every level, though. And I’m a Hitchcock fan!

Jayne Mansfield playing a winsome teen while in her 30s.

R331 - there is always something in a Hitchcock film. I think Torn Curtain has a scene where Paul Newman falls down some stairs which is vintage Hitch.

[quote]r68 Elizabeth Taylor opposite Warren Beatty in The Only Game in Town. She looked short, fat, old, dumpy, and garish.

Which is maybe okay. MAYBE. But she’s supposed to be playing a Vegas showgirl.

[quote]r168 Lee Remick as Margaret Sullavan in Haywire. Sullavan had a distinctive husky voice but Lee doesn't do it.

Where can one see that? I’ve always wanted to because the book’s good.

Don't bother it's terrible.

but it is on YouTube.

[quote]r213 Jaclyn was fucking terrible as Florence Nightingale.

Yes. Everyone knows Florence Nightingale was more of a busty, Joey Heatherton type.

Diana Ross as an elderly Dorothy in "The Wiz."

[quote]r231 Hilary Swank in The Black Dahlia. It feels weird she's portraying someone who is supposed to be this sexy femme fatale.

She was off-puttingly awful in that. Like a transsexual… but not in a good way.

OP's video immediately brought THIS to mind:

R340, she was such an odd casting choice. The movie really didn't work. Usually, I feel like De Palma's casting choices are excellent (he is really skilled with getting decent performances from even the worst actors). But The Black Dahlia just felt terribly cast all the way around.

Melanie Griffith and that WWII Spy movie. I remember seeing it in the theatre and the audience actually laughing.

Emma Samms, Dynasty.

Not "hilarious," but . . . so wrong: Edward Everett Horton as Marlene Dietrich's ex in von Sternberg's THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN. Zero spark between them, and not played for laughs. (It's a pretty good movie, nevertheless.)

John Carradine stepping for Bela Lugosi in a few Universal Dracula movies. He was not scary.

Keanu and Winona on Dracula.

Ronald Reagan as POTUS.

Add Dump to that role too, R348.

Julie Andrews in STAR! She doesn't have the light effortless sophisticated style of Lawrence. Also the voice is wrong for the songs which Lawrence put over not with a great voice but with charm. The soundtrack with Andrews just singing the songs separate from the movie is terrific.

[quote]Woody Allen playing the love interest of any mildly attractive young woman.

Why pick on Woody? Any film with a leading man over 50 and a leading lady in her 20s. Most of hollywood through out it's history, in fact.

Ryan O'Neal the American grad student in 18th Century England in Barry Lyndon. But Kubrick needed an American star to get some money at the box office.

R351, to put it mildly, Woody ain't Cary.

Jimmy Stewart as a love interest to Grace Kelly in Rear Window. He looked like her dad and you never get what she sees in him

No, R353, but Cary was 25 years older than Audrey Hepburn in that film, and they play romantic interests. The age difference is not mentioned, it's not a plot point. Male-female romantic pairings where the man is easily old enough to be the biological father of his paramour, and Hollywood still does this today.

It's gross, laughably unrealistic, and sexist. You never see a young male actor paired with an actress in a part that is old enough to be his mother without that being the major focus of the plot and, usually, a lot of the jokes. And even then, it's still never anything close to a full generation in reality. The most famous example of this, Anne Bancroft played "the older woman" to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, as the mother of his eventual girlfriend who is around his age, yet Anne Bancroft was only about 6 years older than Hoffman. Born in 1931, she was 36 when The Graduate was filmed. Hoffman was 30, playing a 22 year old.

No one is denying it R355 but those men had looks in their youth, at least. Woody was never good looking. So it's even more ludicrous that a young pretty woman would be interested. Its why he had to go after a homely teenage orphan in real life.

Oh and that brings up another hilarious miscast - Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate. He not only looked too old to play a college kid, he looked old for his real age too. He was born to play dad roles from the time he was in his late teens.

R355, that's the point. This leading men were handsome, tall, masculine, all things Woody isn't. Some of them, Grant in particular had very good senses of humor as well. It was believable which is why it was never mentioned. In Manhattan, Woody had to introduce Wallace Shawn into the movie as a joke because he was arguably the only actor in New York who looked homelier and less masculine than Woody.

Travolta in 'Hairspray", but I read somewhere they needed a big name to get financing and he really wanted to do it.

[quote]56 year old Arlene Francis as a pregnant woman in The Thrill of it All.

56 year old Lucille Ball as a pregnant woman in Yours, Mine, and Ours.

Doris Day had been offered Bancroft's role before the latter accepted it. Could have given her a different kind of career.

[quote]Only in hindsight. At the time these movies were produced, apparently nobody was listening to the accents. Everyone in Falworth speaks American. In fact, every Hollywood movie set in England was delivered in American. And the line is "Yonda lies the castle of my foddah."

R278 people in 15th century England would not have spoken the King's English, either.

Received Pronunciation did not develop until the 19th century.

In fact, the English that they spoke before then sounded closer to the standard American accent, according to linguists/historians.

Thus, movies about Shakespeare or Henry VIII or Colonial Era utilizing RP are being anachronistic.

349 posts before the obligatory Trump reference. WOW you gals are slipping in this thread.

The fake Durwood on Bewitched. All time worst casting.

Thanks, R362! Happy to be the first!

xxxx

So MANY to choose from....

[quote]349 posts before the obligatory Trump reference. WOW you gals are slipping in this thread.

Get over it, Mary, if you don't understand why Trump's name comes up so often. Are you offended that people make fun of him?

We're tired of hearing about him R367. Sick to fucking death, in fact.

I wouldn't have commented if you had said Arnold replacing Donald on The Apprentice. At least you would have been on topic.

Drippy, sacharrine Bennye Gatteys trying to replace Denise Alexander as Susan Martin on Days of Our Lives.

R362, a national crisis and a historic, ongoing domestic war on our country's ideals, values and hopes for the future do not deliver a case of anything hilarious, you insufferable cunt.

Go eat your mothers stool. Again.

That would be perfectly cast.

I haven't read through this whole thread, so I apologize if these have been mentioned before, but: Cary Grant as Cole Porter in NIGHT AND DAY, and William Holden in PICNIC.

[quote]Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate. He not only looked too old to play a college kid, he looked old for his real age too. He was born to play dad roles from the time he was in his late teens.

Aside from all that, the name of the character Hoffman played is Benjamin Braddock, and he's supposed to be a total WASP. Mike Nichols was famous for often refusing to cast on the nose -- Liz Taylor in VIRGINIA WOOLF is another famous example. He cast Hoffman in THE GRADUATE for his talent, especially his comic talent, even though he was terribly miscast in terms of age and ethnicity.

Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall in the movie about Brown vs. The Board of Education.

[quote]Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall in the movie about Brown vs. The Board of Education.

At least they didn't cast Mickey Rooney.

[quote]Sean Connery was fairly unconvincing in anything he did.

No. Bond; The Man Who Would Be King, etc.

[quote]A Movie Star, not a great actor.

Yes.

Brynn Thayer replacing Katherine Glass as Jenny Wolek

More tragic than hilarious, but Donald Trump as President

Peyton List as Aileen Wuornos

Thirty-something Diana Ross as the teenaged ‘Dorothy’ in the 1978 film version of “The Wiz.”

Daywalker Connie Britton as Faye Resnick in the Ryan Murphy "OJ" miniseries. This really annoyed the shit out of me, so thanks for the thread, OP!

[quote]Thirty-something Diana Ross as the teenaged ‘Dorothy’ in the 1978 film version of “The Wiz.”

Well, Stephanie, the supposed justification was that they made the character older and turned her into a school teacher. Problem is, because of the way the show and the songs are written, the character and the story don't work at all if she's older. So yes, they should have just cast you in the movie and have you recreate your wonderful stage performance.

Joan Rivers as Joan Rivers in Tears and Laughter: Joan and Melissa Rivers Story.

R382, they didn't want Stephanie because The Wiz was a musical, not a horror movie. Those closeups of Stephanie would traumatize audiences. If they got 15 yo Whitney Houston and turned her into a star, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I’m Emma Samms, and I’m no Pamela Sue Martin… alien abduction or no.

She killed Dynasty

In The Valley of Decision Greer Garson and Gregory Peck play believable lovers.

He at the time was in his 20s and she was in her 40s. Women weren't always finished at an early age back then.

[quote]R386 She killed Dynasty

And deserves to be slapped for it. Viciously.

I dont agree about Hoffman being miscast in The Graduate, I feel Ben being jewish (as was his family) gave the film a bit more color and depth than if it had been just your typical 60's whitebread family, and I dont think it changed anything at all in the story.

[quote]I dont agree about Hoffman being miscast in The Graduate, I feel Ben being jewish (as was his family) gave the film a bit more color and depth than if it had been just your typical 60's whitebread family, and I dont think it changed anything at all in the story.

I agree that it really didn't change the story, but the character and his family were written as WASPS. Also, I'm not sure why you say "as was his family," because I don't think either William Daniels or Elizabeth Wilson came across as Jewish. If they wanted to cast Hoffman because they felt he would be great in the part regardless, they probably should have changed the character's name and cast two other people as his parents.

Aside from all that, as others have pointed out, Hoffman really was too old -- and, more importantly, LOOKED too old -- for the part. But.....his performance was brilliant in terms of acting, especially the comedy of the film.

[quote] Woody Allen playing the love interest of any mildly attractive young woman.

Yes because that would NEVER happen in real life.

R390 he may have been a little old for the part but it was Hoffman. His acting made up for it.

And fyi there ARE very WASP-ish acting jewish families in upper middle class suburbs, especially in CA.

Madonna in Evita. Excellent singing. Acting wasn’t impressive.

R391, the difference is that, in real life, he's rich and famous

[quote]And fyi there ARE very WASP-ish acting jewish families in upper middle class suburbs, especially in CA.

I know that, but my point is that Dustin Hoffman does not look like he could be the son of William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson.

Hoffman was perfect for the role.

R396, many people over the years have opined that he was miscast according to how the character was written in terms of his age and type, but that doesn't mean he didn't give a brilliant performance. Because he DID give a brilliant performance.

Blond, tan, quare jawed, all American hunk Aaron Eckhart as a 19th century poetry professor in the adaptation of AS Byatt’ s Possession.

Um, no. I was at university when that movie was released. My Shakespeare lecturer was dead ringer for Steve Buscemi in Ghost World. Someone like Mark Ruffalo or Edward Norton would have looked the part.

Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. Does not have the gravitas for the role or the looks or the voice. Episodes 1-3 were hilariously bad.

Blue-eyed Jeffrey Hunter as White Jesus in "King of Kings."

Brilliant performance or not, Hoffman was not convincing as a college kid in The Graduate I spent the whole time wondering why it was a big deal to seduce a middle aged man.

[quote]Brilliant performance or not, Hoffman was not convincing as a college kid in The Graduate I spent the whole time wondering why it was a big deal to seduce a middle aged man.

Yes, that's one of the reasons why the miscasting is an issue. Bancroft looks only a few years older than him.

45 year-old Joan Crawford as a carnival cooch dancer in Flamingo Road.

50-year-old Joan addressed as "young lady" in Female on the Beach

Short and squat Lana Turner as a fashion model in A Life of Her Own.

[quote]Yes, that's one of the reasons why the miscasting is an issue. Bancroft looks only a few years older than him.

Bancroft was, in fact, only a few years older than Hoffman. Notice the way she seems to be gritting her teeth when she's forced to say to Hoffman, "I'm twice your age." Bancroft was a great actress, but even she couldn't make that line sound believable, and she must have hated saying it.

[quote]Bancroft was, in fact, only a few years older than Hoffman.

I know. What I meant was, it doesn't matter how old they really were, it matters hold old they looked. And they looked quite close in age.

Sissy spacek, jessica lange & diane keaton in one from the heart - sisters!! Diane keaton & meryl streep in marvin’s room - sisters! Decent performances by all & also really bad casting. Keanu reeves in anything with dialogue (i’d still do him. I’m not that anti )

Lost opportunities;

Beatrice Lillie insisted she play herself as a very close friend of Gertrude Lawrence in Star! She was written out of the film. Fortunately Coward did not insist on playing himself so we got his godson the divine Daniel Massey.

Al Jolson was very angry he didn't get to play himself in The Jolson Story.

1968 film Boom!: Richard Burton as a young stud, Elizabeth Taylor as a late middle-aged woman but not looking it. I am aware she played 50-something Martha a couple of years earlier, but she was "got up" for it.

Albee always thought Taylor was ridiculous in Woolf. I saw the film a few decades later(maybe 92nd Street Y?) and he was there to discuss it and he was still bitching about her casting.

Wendell Corey as the womanizing gambler in The Furies with Barbara Stanwyck. He was so insipid and mealy mouthed to play opposite of her. Robert Ryan or even Van Heflin would have been more suitable in his role.

Jeff Daniels as a college professor in "Terms of Endearment". He doesn't come across as a professor, small college lothario, or husband. I know he's supposed to be rather incompetent in all these aspects, but he doesn't even seem like anyone who'd be considered for any of those roles in real life--you need some pretense of being a professor, an incurable student seducer, etc. He became a much better actor later in his career. I actually like Winger in this (but not Maclaine or Nicolson, who seemed like self-parodies) although she's obviously not from Texas.

[quote]Al Jolson was very angry he didn't get to play himself in The Jolson Story.

Jolson actually appears as himself in a long shot during the "Swanee" number. He also recorded Larry Parks' songs.

[quote] Albee always thought Taylor was ridiculous in Woolf. I saw the film a few decades later(maybe 92nd Street Y?) and he was there to discuss it and he was still bitching about her casting.

Genuinely curious: what was wrong with casting E. Taylor in the Martha role? I've never read the play. I thought she gave a really good performance in the movie.

Too young.

Martha was supposed to be 52. Liz was 32. I think Liz looked older than 32, but not 52. Liz looked maybe 45. I saw the movie without knowing how old the characters were supposed to be. So, it didn't seem "off," to me. It was a depressing movie, not in a bad way.

Francine is much better in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

[QUOTE]Martha was supposed to be 52. Liz was 32.

Liz was 34. And Uta Hagen was 43 when it premiered on Broadway. So was she "too young" too?

I was just thinking about that episode today, R418!

Jim Carrey in Yes Man

I just saw a clip from Taxi Driver (on YouTube). It was the scene where Travis buys Jodie Foster's services. Jodie is supposed to be a 12-year-old prostitute. I just didn't buy her in that role. The scene also wasn't very well-written.

Well I thought Liz was wonderful in the movie, it was the first time I saw it in its entirety, and there is Albee right there in front of me saying she was wrong. So who is going to argue with the author?

Liz Taylor was obviously cast way against type in VIRGINIA WOOLF, but that doesn't mean her performance wasn't excellent. Same with Dustin Hoffman in THE GRADUATE, both films directed by Mike Nichols.

Well we certainly have plenty of people here saying Hoffman was too old for The Graduate. Since I was nowhere near college age when I first saw it as a kid he seemed the right age to me. I was shocked to read he was an elderly man of 30.

You think Bancroft was pissed being 6 years older than him in The Graduate. How do you think Angela felt being 3 years older than Harvey?

Well Angela aged in dog years so probably not that bad.

R425 when I watched Grease as a kid the actors didn't seem old for high school students. Now it makes me laugh

Yeah. They were more Golden Girls than Pink Ladies. Especially Carol Channing

It amazes me that Channing was 45 when she was cast in Dolly. Even more so than Streisand being 26.

Vivian Vance in 1950. She became an amazing trailblazer in The Secret Fury.

[quote]You think Bancroft was pissed being 6 years older than him in The Graduate. How do you think Angela felt being 3 years older than Harvey?

She probably felt used to it. She was only six years older than Carroll Baker and 10 years older than Elvis, and she played their mothers, also.

I bet her vanity as an actor was hurt but she realized she would never be a movie star so she played mothers. Did she get a special Oscar?

[quote] [R391], the difference is that, in real life, he's rich and famous

Yes because struggling actress Mia Farrow had never been in a relationship with a celebrity before and she was overwhelmed by his fame and fortune.

[quote]When I watched Grease as a kid the actors didn't seem old for high school students. Now it makes me laugh

That surprises me, I would think it would be the opposite. When you're a young kid, I think people who are slightly older tend to look much older, whereas when you yourself get older, they tend to look younger. I know I had this experience a few times when I encountered my grammar school teachers a little later in life. Some of the teachers who I thought looked SO OLD when I was just a kid now looked younger even though they were actually older.

R435 I meant that all older people, even high school students, looked old to me. So Grease didn't seem odd to me as a child

R43, at least Keanu is the right age for the part. The characters in the novel including Glenn Close and John Malkovich’s characters are young, not middle aged.

[quote]Guys and Dolls came out in 1955. An American in Paris came out in 1951.

R216 There's a big difference between when a film is made and when it is released.

Albee wanted Bette Davis and Arthur Hill fo WAOVW. Would have been fun to see BD imitating herself early into the film. Have spliced a lot of this film into a video I made lampooning Trump. It will be funny most of the time and quite scary at one point. If YouTube declines it will have to find other venue.

[quote]21-year-old Jane Powell as the sister of 51-year-old Fred Astaire in 1951's Royal Wedding.

Powell's role had been originally intended for Judy Garland.

[quote]There's a big difference between when a film is made and when it is released.

[bold]An American in Paris[/bold] began production in August 1950. [bold]Guys and Dolls[/bold] in March 1955. Kelly not being in G&D had nothing to do with his filming of Paris.

Thank you, R25 -

This is one of those films that no one I know has seen and yet, it causes my friends to seek it out once I've explained the absurdity of Sean Connery playing Dustin Hoffman's father. Throughout the film, SC mentions that he was 17 and just off the boat from Scotland when he met and impregnated Dustin's mother, who was a 16 year old Italian girl.

....

Jeanne Crain as a light-skinned black woman who was "passing" in PINKY.

If ever a role needed Dona Drake .....,

Martha's father was supposed to be resident of the college--he'd be pretty old for that if she's 52. I think Liz is just fine in the role as it's conceptualized. Burton was older than Liz and his George seems older than Martha, too, yet he's supposed to be younger (age 46). Regardless, they make sense as a couple in the film. No miscasting, although it's easy to take george segal for granted. He resists the urge to ham it up, given Sandy Dennis showing off all her tics (to good effect) and the pyrotechnics between Taylor and Burton.

I thought Albee wanted Henry Fonda for George.

Arthur Hill played George on Broadway. He probably underplayed the character relative to Burton. George Grizzard played Nick and I'd imagine that he came across as more of a rake than in George Segal's playing.

I think Davis wanted Fonda and Albee wanted James Mason.

Lucy was going to play Martha but Gary talked her out of it

Fonda says in his autobiography he was offered the role of George in the play but his agent turned it down. He would have loved to have played the role. He did the movie, Spencer's Mountain, instead, which he didn't particularly like.

I don't see why Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor and Annabeth Gish couldn't be cast as people of Portuguese descent. It wasn't hilarious miscasting. The Portuguese people are southern Europeans, they look vaguely "Spanish" but range from dark haired to light haired, have varying eye colors, soft features.

Likewise, Spencer Tracy, in Captains Courageous, I don't know about his accent, if anything it was exaggerated. He gave a great performance, but again, do you need to cast a Portuguese person to satisfy people nowadays?

The Lord Buddha dude.