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Albert Brooks Has Turned Down Some Pretty Impressive Movies

Albert Brooks.

In Hollywood, hindsight is 20/20, so sometimes it’s fun to look at the roles rejected by some actors and imagine what might have been. Montgomery Clift famously turned down leads in Sunset Boulevard and East of Eden, but what might have become of his life if he’d said yes? If John Travolta hadn’t passed on American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Chicago, would Richard Gere have any career at all? And then there’s Albert Brooks: In a new interview with Collider, Brooks says that owing to his directing career, he was forced to turn down acting roles in Big, Dead Poets Society, Pretty Woman, and Boogie Nights. “I was in pre-production of my own movie [when I was offered] the part that Burt Reynolds got in Boogie Nights,” Brooks recalls of the biggest one that got away. “I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t shut down what I was doing. But, regrets are stupid; they don’t mean anything and they don’t add up to anything.” True enough, and besides, could Brooks have pulled off that snapping jewelry-box scene as well as Julia Roberts did? (We assume that’s the Pretty Woman role he was offered.) [Collider]

Albert Brooks Has Turned Down Some Pretty Impressive Movies