1. Al Pacino was actually the first choice to play Han Solo in the “Star Wars” franchise. But he said he turned down the role because he didn’t understand the script.Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images“It was at that time in my career where I was offered everything,” he told MTV. “I was in ‘The Godfather.’ They didn’t care if I was right or wrong for the role, if I could act or not act.” Obviously, Harrison Ford went on to play the iconic role.Walt Disney Studios2. Gal Gadot was originally offered a starring role in Greta Gerwig’s hiiiiighly anticipated movie “Barbie,” but said no to the role due to scheduling conflicts.Taylor Hill / Getty ImagesMargot Robbie told Vogue, “Gal Gadot is Barbie energy. Because Gal Gadot is so impossibly beautiful, but you don’t hate her for being that beautiful, because she’s so genuinely sincere, and she’s so enthusiastically kind, that it’s almost dorky. It’s like right before being a dork.”Warner Bros.3. Amy Schumer was also tied to “Barbie” at one point, but left the movie due to “creative differences.”Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images for Writers Guild of America East“The studio definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it. The only way I was interested in doing it,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “The idea that that’s just what every woman must want, right there, I should have gone, ‘You’ve got the wrong gal.’”© Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection4. Jackie Chan turned down the starring role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” The film’s directing duo, The Daniels, even traveled to China to get him to sign onto the movie but he passed.Daniele Venturelli / Getty Images for The Red Sea International Film FestivalThey ended up rewriting the role for Michelle Yeoh, who won an Academy Award for her performance in the movie, and she jokes that Chan still teases her about him being offered the role first. “Jackie actually texted me,” she said. “And he says: ‘Wow, I hear amazing things about your movie. Did you know that the boys came to see me in China?’ And I said: ‘Yes, your loss, my bro!’”Allyson Riggs /© A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection5. Kate McKinnon was originally offered the role of Elizabeth Holmes in “The Dropout,” but she ended up leaving the series after being cast as Carole Baskin in the Peacock limited series “Joe vs. Carole.”Rob Kim / Getty ImagesAmanda Seyfried went on to play Elizabeth Holmes and scored an Emmy Award for her performance in the limited series.Beth Dubber / ©Hulu / Courtesy Everett Collection6. Matt Damon was originally tapped to star in “Avatar” and James Cameron offered him 10% of the movie’s profits, which would’ve been about $250 million.Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images for DeadlineSam Worthington ended up playing the role instead. He said no to the movie and now over a decade later he admitted it was “the dumbest thing an actor ever did in the history of acting.”20thcentfox / ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection7. Henry Winkler was originally offered the role of Danny Zuko in “Grease,” but he turned it down in fear of being typecast after playing a similar role as the Fonz on “Happy Days.”Santiago Felipe / Getty Images“I am a damn fool,” he told CNN’s Chris Wallace. “I only realized years afterwards. I thought, I’ve played the Fonz, I don’t want to do it again.”Paramount / ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection8. Michael Keaton was tapped to star in “Groundhog Day” but he turned down the movie because he “didn’t get it.”Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty ImagesBill Murray went on to star and even Keaton agreed that no one could’ve played the role better. He told EW, “This guy sounds like the kind of wry, sardonic, glib young man I’ve played — and it ended up being so great. But you can’t do it better than Bill Murray did it.”Columbia Pictures / ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection9. Cate Blanchett was originally supposed to star as Lucille Ball in “Being the Ricardos,” but she dropped out of the project and Nicole Kidman played the role instead.Marc Piasecki / FilmMagicKidman even got an Oscar nomination for her performance in the movie. “It became the movie it needed to be,” Blanchett said. “Those things happen in the right way, at the right time. In the best possible way, you don’t always envisage the same thing; and then it goes on to become a different entity.”Glen Wilson / © Amazon Studios / courtesy Everett Collection10. Halle Berry was originally offered Sandra Bullock’s role in the movie “Speed,” which ended up boosting Sandra into stardom.Arturo Holmes / Getty ImagesBerry told ET, “I stupidly said no. But in my defence, when I read the script the bus didn’t leave the parking lot. I was like no, no, no, no.”Mgm / ©MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection11. Madonna shared that she was offered a role in “The Matrix” but turned it down and a part of her still “regrets” the decision.Kevin Mazur / WireImage“Can you believe that? That’s like one of the best movies ever made,” she told Jimmy Fallon. “A teeny-tiny part of me regrets just that one moment in my life.”Warner Bros / ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection12. Jessica Simpson was cast to star in “The Notebook” but she said no to the role because she didn’t want to film a sex scene with Ryan Gosling.Amy Sussman / Getty Images“I knew exactly what the movie was about because I had read the script,” she wrote in her book, adding that when she asked to cut the sex scene the studio execs “wouldn’t budge.”New Line Cinema / ©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett CollectionShe shared that her relationship with Nick Lachey at the time also influenced her decision. She wrote, “[The Notebook] is the most romantic movie in the world, and I was leaving Nick. The movie was on every screen, and I was swept up into it, wishing I had that great love that would be forever.”13. Jennifer Hudson was offered the starring role in the film “Precious,” but she turned it down not wanting to take another role that focused on her weight.Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for The Recording AcademyGabourey Sidibe went on to star in the movie and earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination.In her book she wrote, “I had done that with Effie [in ‘Dreamgirls’]… and as much as I was moved by this film, I wanted to try a role that had nothing whatsoever to do with my weight.”Lions Gate / ©Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett Collection14. Matthew Modine was originally offered the role of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in “Top Gun” before the role ultimately went to Tom Cruise, and launched his career.Neil Mockford / FilmMagicCruise also starred in the film’s blockbuster sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” last year. As to why he turned down the role Modine explained that he didn’t want to endorse militarism and he doesn’t regret passing on the movie.Paramount / Everett CollectionHe told Salon, “Cruise said that he felt that ‘Top Gun’ was a movie about individualism and personal strength. I just thought the movie was jingoistic.”15. Christina Applegate was tapped to star in “Legally Blonde” but she said no to the movie out of fear of being typecast or “repeating” herself.Leon Bennett / Getty Images“The script came along my way and it was right after I had just finished, ‘Married [...with Children]’, and it was a blonde who in that first script didn’t win it but ends up going to Yale, or Harvard, I don’t remember,” she told ET. “I got scared of kind of repeating myself. What a stupid move that was, right?”Mgm / ©MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection16. Emma Watson was rumored to have been cast in the movie “La La Land,” alongside Miles Teller, but Emma Stone ended up starring in the movie with Ryan Gosling.Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images for Elton John AIDS FoundationEmma Stone even won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in the movie. Watson confirmed that she was supposed to be in “La La Land,” but had already committed to “Beauty and the Beast.” [It] wasn’t a movie I could just sort of step into,” she said. “I knew I had horse training, I knew I had dancing, I knew I had three months of singing ahead of me and I knew I had to be in London to really do that. This wasn’t a movie I could just kind of parachute into. I knew I had to do the work, and I had to be where I had to be. So, you know, scheduling conflict-wise, it just didn’t work out.”Lions Gate / ©Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett CollectionCoincidentally, Emma Stone almost starred in “Little Women” but couldn’t because of scheduling and Emma Watson took over the role.17. Will Smith was offered Jamie Foxx’s role in “Django Unchained,” but he turned it down because of creative differences with the movie’s director Quentin Tarantino.Kevin Winter / Getty ImagesHe told Vanity Fair, “It was about the creative direction of the story. To me, it’s as perfect a story as you could ever want: a guy that learns how to kill to retrieve his wife that has been taken as a slave. That idea is perfect. And it was just that Quentin and I couldn’t see [eye to eye]. I wanted to make the greatest love story that African-Americans had ever seen…”Weinstein Company / ©Weinstein Company/Courtesy Everett Collection18. Finally, Julia Roberts passed on “Sleepless in Seattle” because of scheduling conflicts and Meg Ryan went on to play the role.Steve Granitz / FilmMagic“I’d been offered ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ but couldn’t do it,” Roberts said. ”[Meg] and Tom Hanks are just such a jewel of a fit in that. I guess what they did for that moment in time is sort of what Richard [Gere] and I were doing across town, you know?”Tristar Pictures / ©TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection