If it’s really true that actress Jena Malone (Stepmom, Donnie Darko) had all her scenes in Batman V. Superman land on the cutting room floor, Malone can take solace in this: it happens all the time. And to big names, too. (Note: just because it’s been confirmed doesn’t mean Malone won’t appear — nobody likes surprises and misdirection more than makers of superhero films.) Malone has some pretty nice company though, if she’s out. Here are 13 stars whose roles never made it into the theatrical release of films they acted in.
It’s almost never the performance itself that triggers the cut — it’s usually the logic of the narrative that makes a character superfluous as the final film takes its shape.
- Ashley Judd cut from Natural Born Killers
- Harrison Ford cut from E.T.
- Uma Thurman cut from Savages (Blake Lively’s mom cut to streamline the story)
- Jennifer Jason Leigh cut from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick always lost actors — he took so long to make a film!)
- Rachel Weisz cut from To The Wonder (like Malone, Weisz was cut out after acting with Ben Affleck! Terrence Malick as mercurial as Kubrick. It has to be really really hard to cut Rachel Weisz.)
- Tobey Maguire cut from Life of Pi (Ang Lee’s spidey sense was tingling too much — Maguire was a distraction.)
- Jamie Dornan cut from Burnt
- Paul Rudd cut from Bridesmaids — by pal Kristen Wiig)
- Liza Minelli cut from The King of Comedy (Scorsese probably thought Liza was too distracting for this savage masterpiece.)
- Kevin Costner cut from The Big Chill (And killed too, you do get a glimpse of Alex’s corpse.)
- Ellen Pompeo cut from Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
- James Gandolfini cut from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Sandra Bullock’s character had Gandolfini as a suitor, but they cut like he’d stolen from the Sopranos.)
- Andy Garcia cut from Dangerous Minds (Garcia didn’t get in bed with Michelle Pfeiffer, but he cashed the check.)
