Just because you’re a famous actor does not mean that you can’t end up on the cutting room floor.
The editing room is a cold dark place. After filming for sixteen hours per day, five days a week for several months, the goal of the editing room is to create an entertaining movie. Sometimes, some of America’s favorite actors end up on the cutting room floor instead of the big screen.
Here are five instances where an a famous actor was cut from their movie.
#5. Shailene Woodley – The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Shailene Woodley‘s role in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” was the center of a ton of controversy. Prior to filming, it was announced that Shailene Woodley would play Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker’s iconic girlfriend and later wife but, at the last minute she would be cut from the movie. In an interview with MTV she explained the decision to remove her from the movie.
“I think it’s smart, honestly,” she told MTV. “Looking back at it, MJ was in I think four scenes. I shot three days and they were good scenes, but they were also like 45-second long scenes, and to introduce such a vital character like that doesn’t make much sense in the end.”
#4. Paul Rudd – Bridesmaids
Kirsten Wiig the writer and lead actress in ‘Bridesmaids’ revealed that people didn’t really like Paul Rudd’s scenes in the movie. “We did screenings, and when he popped up on screen, people just went crazy. You rarely get to see that side of Paul Rudd because he’s such a nice person, you know, and in this scene he’s such an a–hole.
“We had so much fun the days he was there and [cutting him] was so incredibly painful. Our first cut was so long. It’s the hardest thing to have to cut stuff.”
#3. Uma Thurman – Savages
In the movie “Savages” directed by Oliver Stone, there were several reports that Stone had a hard time cutting Uma Thurman (Kill Bill) from the movie. Thurman played the mother of Blake Lively‘s character, a rich hippie girl named O. Thurman’s character is a multiple divorcee and her lack of parenting has an everlasting effect on Blake Lively turning her into a hippie. Oliver Stone later commented that he had to cut several scenes from the movie and Thurman’s character ended up being removed from the movie completely.
“Oh we cut a lot; the book is one hundred and twenty scenes. I think we only in a movie have 30 scenes to play,” Stone told journalists in Los Angeles of the sections of the novel whittled down and excised in the adaptation process. “We had to make decisions in script, we made decisions in the editing, we had to consolidate so much and there’s so many things different in the movie than the book, you have to read the book to understand that.”
#2. Harrison Ford – ET
Harrison Ford just finished making Raiders of the Lost Ark with Steven Spielberg and Spielberg was about to start filming the new movie ET. Harrison Ford managed to land a role as the school prinicipal in the movie. But, his single scene is eventually cut from the movie because too much attention was played on Harrison Ford than what was actually happening.
#1. Chris Cooper – The Ring
In the original version of ‘The Ring’, the Oscar-winning actor Chris Cooper shows up in the final scene in the movie. Cooper plays a serial rapist and murder who tries to convince Naomi Watt’s journalist that he has changed his ways. She ends up not believing him and giving him the video tape in prison. Despite being a good idea, it did not sit well with test audiences. People found it very distracting to use such a major known actor at the end of the movie when people wanted more of him. The director ended up cutting him from the movie.
A Country Called Home will be produced by Nicolas Gonda from “Tree of Life” and directed by Anna Axter, who also wrote the screenplay for ‘A Country Called Home‘.
