Film casting must be the most underrated job in the industry. As a matter of fact, most of the time, there won’t be any problems with the casting. People just take it for granted that Heath Ledger is born to play The Joker and Marlon Brando is built to make the Godfather his role. However, sometimes the casting decisions did go wrong. It’s not the actors’ fault, they just appeared in the wrong movies. Here are 20 bad casting decisions in the history of Hollywood.
20. Angelina Jolie as Margaret Russell
The Movie: The Good Shepherd
The Miscasting: Angelina Jolie is just too sexy to play the domestic wife. Can you imagine her staying at home while Damon’s character traveling around Europe? Not a chance!
19. Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi
The Movie: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
The Miscasting: McGregor is great in both Shallow Grave and Trainspotting as a sneaky young man. but he’s not right for a Jedi master, maybe Alec Guinness is just too good that anyone who plays the young version seems wrong.
18. Keanu Reeves as John Constantine
The Movie: Constantine
The Miscasting: Comic book Constantine is a wry Liverpudlian with a Thatcher’s Britain attitude to making enemies and amoral decisions. Reeves is a blank plank of American vacancy battling demons but not looking that bothered about it.
17. Halle Berry as Catwoman
The Movie: Catwoman
The Miscasting: The biggest mistake here is to cast an Oscar-winning actress and gave her a script with nothing substantial on it.
16. Colin Farrell as Alexander The Great
The Movie: Alexander
The Miscasting: Playboy Farrell plays one of the greatest kings in the history of human kind? With that Irish accent? This couldn’t go more wrong.
15. Ralph Fiennes as Christopher Marshall
The Movie: Maid in Manhattan
The Miscasting: Fiennes is a brilliant actor, there is no doubt about it. But he’s just not right for any Romance film. If you have watched Red Dragon, you would feel as he was going to bite J-Lo’s mouth off in those romantic scenes.
14. Christian Bale as John Connor
The Movie: Terminator Salvation
The Miscasting: Simply put, Christian Bale, one of the greatest actors working in Hollywood today, is too good for a lousy role like Connor in this terrible movie.
13. Ed Norton as Will Graham
The Movie: Red Dragon
The Miscasting: It’s hard to imagine this miscast actually happens in a film where other characters are all brilliantly cast (as a matter of fact, the first three films in the franchise are all well-cast except this one), we want something like his role in Primal Fear here, but his agent is too weak to be a strong opponent of Dr. Hannibal.
12. Julia Roberts as Tess
The Movie: Ocean’s Twelve
The Miscasting: Julia Roberts pretends that she is Julia Roberts, sounds pretty good and normal, right? But it takes a really charming woman to shine in a male-dominant film like this, Roberts surely failed the task.
11. Brad Pitt as Achilles
The Movie: Troy
The Miscasting: To cast Brad Pitt as the handsome warrior sounds like a good idea, but Pitt’s presence is too perfect for the role, he looks like nothing more than a blonde doll in the film.