Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Horror Movie Roles

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The right movie role can provide an actor with not only the fast track to stardom, but also lasting fame and even status as a pop culture icon. Horror films are no exception: hard-working but largely anonymous actors like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Robert Englund were boosted to worldwide attention after being cast as Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, and Freddy Krueger, respectively, while major stars like Jack Nicholson and Anthony Hopkins earned some of their most beloved screen appearances in The Shining and Silence of the Lambs.

But for every big break afforded by playing the Big Bad in a fright film, there is an equal and opposite number of actors who missed the express route to fame by turning down a role in what would turn out to be a much-loved title in the horror canon. Some were actors at the height of their box office power and weathered the missed opportunities, while others, whose careers had just begun, would rebound from the loss and vault into the spotlight with a subsequent project. In either case, here's a gallery of horror icons that might have been but never were.

Possible spoilers to follow.

Anthony Hopkins delivered what was perhaps his most enduring film role with his performance as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. But Hopkins wasn't the first actor to be considered for Thomas Harris' urbane psychopath. Literary agent Robert Bookman told Deadline that another Oscar winner — Gene Hackman — had optioned the rights to Harris' novel with the intention of not only playing Lecter, but also directing the film. However, Bookman said that Hackman's tenure at the helm of Lambs was not only tumultuous but short-lived: after approving Ted Tally as screenwriter, he remained undecided on whether to direct and play Lecter or FBI chief Jack Crawford (played in the finished film by Scott Glenn) before dropping out of the film altogether. According to Bookman, this was on the advice of his daughter, who apparently considered the film's violent content — and, undoubtedly, Lecter's appetite — potentially poisonous for her father's career.

The late Sir Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, OBE, were nothing short of horror movie royalty, thanks to their frequent collaborations for England's Hammer Films during the 1960s, most notably as Dracula and Dr. Van Helsing in Horror of Dracula. Those films made both actors go-tos for horror roles throughout their long careers, including Sam Loomis, Michael Myers' doctor turned pursuer, in John Carpenter's Halloween. The documentary Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest details that both Lee and Cushing were offered Loomis and turned it down, which led Carpenter and producer Debra Hill to approach another English actor with a talent for the sinister: Donald Pleasance. The actor — who was largely known at the time for his stage work and as a Bond villain in You Only Live Twice — would go on to reprise Loomis in five Halloween sequels before his death in 1995. Lee would later tell both Carpenter and Hill that he regretted his decision, though his late-career revival in both the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings franchises must have made up for that choice.

When casting Jaws, director Steven Spielberg wanted "somewhat anonymous" actors with whom audiences would identify, even in a story about a giant, man-eating shark. Despite his wishes, producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown wanted name actors for the three leads, including Robert Duvall, who had then recently appeared in The Godfather. Duvall was offered the role of Chief Brody, but refused, citing his interest in playing Quint. The latter was also offered to a pair of Hollywood veterans — Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden — but both turned it down, with Hayden telling Spielberg that as a fisherman in real life, he expected to battle a real shark in the film. You can guess the response to that request. The director eventually came to his triumvirate of heroes in Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.

Jeff Goldblum vaulted from eclectic character actor to leading man with his full-bodied (literally and otherwise) performance as Dr. Seth Brundle in David Cronenberg's The Fly. But in an interview with Toronto's IN Magazine, acclaimed actor John Lithgow revealed he was initially considered to play the ill-fated scientist. The Oscar nominee said that his representation wanted him to take the part, but he turned down the opportunity because he found the project "icky" after reading Charles Edward Pogue and Cronenberg's script. "I told my agent I just didn't want to play something so grotesque," he noted. Lithgow has never shied away from outrageous or dark characters, as his turns in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, Twilight Zone: The Movie, and even the recent Bombshell have proven. But given Chris Walas and Stephen Dupuis's incredible, Oscar-winning special effects makeup required for Brundle in Fly mode, it's understandable that Lithgow might have wanted to take a pass.

Actor Charles Laughton — no stranger to horror himself through roles in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Black Room with Boris Karloff, and others — made his sole directorial effort with his adaptation of Davis Grubb's Southern Gothic novel Night of the Hunter, about a psychotic preacher who terrorizes a young widow and her children in order to get her late husband's cache of stolen loot. The film — considered a masterpiece of suspense — would require a powerhouse actor to play the Reverend Harry Powell, whose moral compass is clearly laid out by the tattoos of "Love" and "Hate" on his hands. 

Laughton himself considered playing Powell before offering the role to Gary Cooper, an actor known for upstanding, heroic turns in Sergeant York and The Pride of the Yankees. Cooper passed, believing that playing such a venomous role would undo his career. Laughton then approached Robert Mitchum, who had cultivated a cool-cruel screen persona in classic noir like Out of the Past, as well as an outlaw image thanks to a 1948 arrest for marijuana possession. When told by Laughton that Powell was a "diabolical s***," Mitchum reportedly said, "Present!" And a high water mark of enduring movie malice was born.

Which qualities does one need as an actor to play the adoptive father of the Antichrist? Apparently, a granite jaw and a resonant voice were at the top of the list when casting Ambassador Richard Thorn in Richard Donner's Satanic classic The Omen. According to interviews with Donner and his future star, Oscar winner Gregory Peck (pictured here with co-star David Warner) was always the frontrunner, but other sources note that a slew of other American leading men were considered for the role. Chief among them: Oscar winner Charlton Heston, who wrote in his autobiography that he turned down an offer to play Thorn due to the subject matter, as well as his lack of interest in spending the winter of 1975 alone in Europe. Another Oscar winner, William Holden, was given a shot at playing Thorn, but he also refused, citing his reluctance to appear in a film about the Devil. But as American Movie Classics noted, Holden would make his way to the Omen franchise for the sequel, Damien: Omen II, playing the brother of Peck's character and Damien's second (and equally ill-fated) adoptive father.