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Casting is one of those invisible skills that forms the bedrock of filmmaking. When it’s done well, you might not notice it at all; when it’s done badly, you’ll know in an instant.
There are many reasons why casting can go wrong. Sometimes an actor is unable to do an accent. Sometimes they aren’t the right age. Often, pre-existing characters will invite extra scrutiny, with fans complaining if the casting doesn’t live up to the original description. Invariably, it leads to a backlash.
Consider, for instance, the forthcoming movie adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, from Saltburn director Emerald Fennell. While the film is still in the early stages of production, fans have loudly criticised the casting of its lead characters, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. The famous literary figures will be played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi respectively.
Audiences will have to wait until the film is out in cinemas to determine whether or not the “miscasting” allegations hold water.
In the meantime, here is a rundown of 20 of the worst pieces of casting in film history.
20. Johnny Flynn, Stardust
Look back over some of the myriad music biopics that have been cranked out over the last two decades, and you’ll find no shortage of poor casting decisions. There’s nonetheless something memorably regrettable about 2020’s Stardust, which cast folk musician and Lovesick star Johnny Flynn as none other than David Bowie. I don’t know if anyone is capable of accurately capturing Bowie’s peculiar genius, but it’s certainly a task too tall for Flynn, who is admittedly not helped by the absence of Bowie’s music. As Clarisse Loughrey wrote in her 2020 review: “Flynn doesn’t deserve to get a bad rap for his performance as David Bowie in Stardust, Gabriel Range’s flimsy biopic of the star. The actor-musician, so magnetic in last year’s Emma, is convincing as a tortured glam rocker – just not the one who ever sang about Major Tom’s interplanetary adventures.”
19. Edward Norton, The Incredible Hulk
For all its sins, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has usually excelled when it comes to casting, whether that’s hiring Robert Downey Jr as the arrogant Tony Stark, or Chris Evans as the plain, upstanding Steve Rogers. One glaring exception, however, came at the very first hurdle – when Edward Norton was cast in the role of Bruce Banner (aka the Hulk) in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. Norton, obnoxious and undisguisedly a thespian, failed to convince in his sole outing as the green mutant, and reports of behind-the-scenes creative disagreements were widespread. When he was replaced, in the franchise, by the excellent and offbeat Mark Ruffalo, it exposed just how little impact Norton had made as Banner. Perhaps it’s time Hulk’s catchphrase got an update? “Don’t make me Ed Norton. You won’t like me when I’m Ed Norton.”
18. John Mills, Great Expectations
To be clear: David Lean’s 1946 adaptation of Charles Dickens’s rags-to-riches tale remains one of the best-ever translations of classic literature to the screen. John Mills, as the adult version of Philip “Pip” Pirrip, is great in the lead role, earnest and engaging and credible. Well – not that credible. Mills was pushing 40 when he filmed his part, and, for much of the film, is playing Pip at the very start of adulthood. Twenty-year-old men just aren’t supposed to look like that.
17. Dane DeHaan, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Despite being widely mocked and disparaged on its release, Luc Besson’s sci-fi blockbuster Valerian had a lot going for it: inventive set-pieces, fun world-building, and a vibrant, surreal aesthetic. All it needed was some charisma – a leading man who could pull off a sort of Han Solo-ish vibe as the titular spacefarer. Dane DeHaan is so lacking in this charisma it’s almost bizarre; on a line-by-line basis, his performance is mortifyingly stiff, and the abject non-chemistry with co-star Cara Delevingne is a thing to behold. Valerian is an underrated gem brimming with fun creative decisions, but the casting sure ain’t one of them.
16. Johnny Depp, The Lone Ranger
There are a good few Johnny Depp projects that could have been placed on this list (whoever thought he could fill Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka shoes?) but none so egregious as The Lone Ranger. The film saw Depp play Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s Native American sidekick, in a piece of casting that attracted no small amount of controversy. Depp has claimed that he has Native American ancestry, and considers the role a corrective to some of cinema’s historically problematic depictions of Native American characters. Nonetheless, it’s clear that Depp, broad and over-mannered here, was never right for the role.
15. Kevin Costner, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Few men have embodied American exceptionalism in quite the way that Kevin Costner once did; the man seems to ooze symbolic resonance from every pore. So casting him as a famous Brit, in 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, was always going to be a dicey proposition. Reports have claimed that Costner attempted to do an English accent but was steered back to his native brogue having already filmed several scenes. Whatever the case, the end result is about as English as biscuits ’n’ gravy. There must be something about the prince of thieves that invites miscasting: years after this dubious portrayal, Russell Crowe was similarly ill-suited to the role in 2010’s Robin Hood.
14. Tom Cruise, Jack Reacher
Depending on who you ask, Tom Cruise is many things. He’s an underrated character actor; an inscrutable eccentric; an adrenaline-chasing madman; maybe even our last great movie star. But one thing Cruise is not, is particularly tall. Hence the mass fan outcry over his casting as Jack Reacher, a character who, as written by Lee Child, is big and brawny in the Chris Hemsworth mould. Cruise does a perfectly serviceable job in the role, but he just isn’t Jack Reacher – at least, not the Jack Reacher that fans were demanding.
13. Angelina Jolie, Alexander
The casting of Angelina Jolie in Alexander represents a particularly stupid case of “Hollywood brain”. Who better to play the mother of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell, then aged 28) than Jolie, then aged 29? The one-year mother-son age discrepancy is a folly rooted in sexism – and it’s an oddity that no amount of makeup can disguise.
12. Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit
What can we say about Taika Waititi in Jojo Rabbit? Not since spaced-out hippie Lorenzo St DuBois flounced onstage in The Producers has the role of Adolf Hitler been so catastrophically miscast. Waititi, who directed himself in this poor-taste Second World War comedy, would be unrecognisable as the Nazi leader, save for the outfit and hairdo; his Hitler is over-broad, flamboyant and as petulant as a schoolchild. Even as an attempt to spoof and belittle one of history’s greatest monsters, Waititi just doesn’t work.
11. Hayden Christensen, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
Look: it’s become a little unfashionable to pick on Hayden Christensen’s much-criticised Star Wars performance. Revisionistic love for George Lucas’s prequel trilogy is now a fairly common position within the franchise’s fanbase, and Christensen was even brought back as Anakin Skywalker in the recent Disney+ series Ahsoka. But there’s no getting around just how ill-suited he is for the role. How could a figure this whiny and devoid of gravitas possibly grow up to be Darth Vader?
10. Scarlett Johansson, Ghost in the Shell
Scarlett Johansson isn’t the beginning and end of Ghost in the Shell’s casting problem, but she was the face of it. In adapting the seminal anime movie into live action, Paramount was accused of “whitewashing”, after Johansson was cast as a character who is, in the source material, Asian. Critics and audiences disagree over just how offensive the casting may have been, but the controversy ended up enveloping the film’s release – and, “whitewashing” or not, Johansson’s performance as a cyborg supersoldier was never that convincing to begin with.
9. Kristy Swanson, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Kristy Swanson. How was she to know, when she accepted the role of Buffy Summers in the genre-bending vampire film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that Sarah Michelle Gellar would, only a few years later, turn the character into a bona fide pop cultural icon? The 1992 film – a drastically inferior prototype for the gem that Buffy would ultimately metastasise into – had problems beyond Swanson, for sure. But she was nonetheless a poor choice for Buffy, bringing out only the character’s most vapid and rebarbative qualities.
8. Kyle MacLachlan, Dune
Kyle MacLachlan may well be the first actor you think of when you hear the name “David Lynch”, thanks to his timeless roles in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. But his first collaboration with the director was a total misstep – Lynch’s infamously errant attempt to adapt the sci-fi tome Dune. MacLachlan is too old for the role, but also utterly the wrong vibe. Too flat and too oblique, he was no Lisan al Gaib – this false prophet was fooling no one.
7. Elijah Wood, Green Street
A relatively short, sweet-seeming American man, Elijah Wood was the perfect choice for Frodo Baggins – plucky little Hobbit of the Shire who’s swept along by a grand fantasy adventure. Wood was not such a perfect choice for Matt “The Yank” Buckner – violent football hooligan. Yet that’s exactly who he played in the 2005 football hooliganism film Green Street. The early stretches of the movie, which position Wood as a sort of uncomfortable fish out of water in the UK football scene, are just about fine, but Wood’s descent into grubby Brit violence is about as credible as Tottenham’s chances of winning a major trophy.
6. Tom Holland, Uncharted
If I asked you to picture a rugged, Indiana Jones-esque adventurer, I very much doubt it would be the face of Tom Holland that comes to mind. Yet the chipper Spider-Man star was nonetheless chosen to play rugged, Indiana Jones-esque Nathan Drake in Uncharted, 2023’s blockbuster adaptation of the hit video game franchise. Holland is too young and too physically unimposing to ever really convince as Drake, while Mark Wahlberg’s turn as his briny, cigar-chomping mentor Sully is scarcely any better.
5. Cameron Diaz, Gangs of New York
A pretty good film anchored by a terrific Daniel Day-Lewis performance, Gangs of New York was nonetheless slated for its casting of Cameron Diaz in the role of Irish pickpocket Jenny Everdeane. It’s the atrocious accent that draws most of the flak – and ought to be disqualifying in and of itself – but Diaz, often great elsewhere, seems lost and ineffectual with the material to boot.
4. George Clooney, Batman & Robin
There have been many actors to pull on the Dark Knight’s cowl over the years, with massively varying results. But there’s little debate when it comes to the worst to ever do it: George Clooney, in 1997’s Batman & Robin, surely takes the bat-prize. What might have seemed like a winning combination on paper simply didn’t work; Clooney’s cut-marble charisma feels all wrong for Bruce Wayne. Even those who defend Joel Schumacher’s unapologetically camp take on the material struggle to find a good word to say about the ER star’s casting here.
3. Zoe Saldaña, Nina
The casting of Guardians of the Galaxy star Zoe Saldaña in this 2016 biopic of Nina Simone was criticised at the time, and for good reason. Saldaña, who is Afro-Latina, darkened her skin and wore a prosthetic nose to play the monolithic soul singer; she later expressed regret over signing on to the role. “I should have never played Nina,” she said in 2020. “I should have done everything in my power, with the leverage that I had 10 years ago – a different leverage, but it was leverage nonetheless. I should have tried everything in my power to cast a Black woman to play an exceptionally perfect Black woman.”
2. Ben Platt, Dear Evan Hansen
Every musical performer knows the importance of timing – and timing is exactly what made Dear Evan Hansen such a disaster. Ben Platt’s return to the stage role that made him famous came years too late. Playing mendacious schoolchild Evan Hansen, Platt was 27 in real life and looked every day of it. The attempts to make him look younger through wigs and makeup actually ended up ageing him further, giving his character a kind of creepy, veiny pallor. There’s a reason this is one of the most ruthlessly memed performances in history – Platt’s casting wasn’t so much a bum note as a whole bum symphony.
1. Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
There’s not all that much to say about Mickey Rooney’s infamous turn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as the bucktoothed Mr Yunioshi. It’s a hideous racist caricature, and there’s no way in hell that he should have been cast. Blake Edwards, the film’s director, admitted as much towards the end of his life, stating: “Looking back, I wish I had never done it ... and I would give anything to be able to recast it.” Hollywood still has its racial problems when it comes to casting, but Breakfast at Tiffany’s is mercifully now beyond the pale.
