All these performers, as RadarOnline.com has revealed, have gone on to be super successful and win a slew of awards during their careers, but it's not red carpets and expensive gowns all the time. They still carry the hurt and humiliation of losing out on roles because of some pretty harsh – and upsetting – reasons.
Zoe Kravitz was told she was "too urban" for a role in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises. She talked about auditioning for the part in a 2015 interview with Nylon, revealing she wasn't even allowed in the auditioning room. Ten years later, she would go on to get the part of Selina Kyle (Catwoman) in the 2022 film The Batman.
When Maggie Gyllenhaal was 37, she was told by a Hollywood producer she was simply "too old" to play the love interest opposite a 55-year-old man, she said during an interview with The Wrap. "It was astonishing to me," she said. "It made me feel bad, and then it made me angry, and then it made me laugh."
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Zoe Kravitz was called 'too urban' as Maggie Gyllenhaal was told she was 'too old.'
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Elle Fanning explained during a roundtable discussion with The Hollywood Reporter that she auditioned for a movie when she was 16 years old, and "a person said, 'Oh, she didn't get the father-daughter road trip comedy because she's unf***able.' It's so disgusting. And I can laugh at it now, like, 'What a disgusting pig.'"
After trying for the role of Lisbeth Salander in the 2011 movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Scarlett Johansson lost it to Rooney Mara for not being fragile enough. But afterward, she said Mara was the right pick after all.
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Elle Fanning was deemed 'unf*able' while Scarlett Johansson wasn't 'fragile.'
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Reese Witherspoon told Harper's Bazaar she'd been declined for a role because she was simply "too smart" to play a female heroine in a movie. She went on to say how, for Hollywood roles, "I was always considered TOO something. Too short. Too feisty. Too energetic. I once got told I seemed too smart to play a young female character." But, she added: "Sometimes the universe is protecting you from a bad job or a toxic relationship. So remember next time you fail at something or someone leaves you heartbroken ... let yourself be sad, grieve what didn't happen for a minute, but move on. Better things are waiting for you."
Nia Long revealed in Entertainment Weekly she lost the role of investigator Alex Munday in the movie Charlie's Angels – which went to Lucy Liu – because she was "too Black" and "too old."
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Reese Witherspoon was 'too smart' and Nia Long said she was 'too Black' for the part.
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Regé-Jean Page shared with Variety he lost the role of Superman's grandfather in the movie Krypton because he was Black. A show bigwig said, "Superman couldn't have a Black grandfather." He later said on the social media site X, "Hearing about these conversations hurts no less than it did back then."
Actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish revealed to The Hollywood Reporter she intentionally left her handbag behind after auditioning with her phone on recording mode so she could go back inside and catch what they had been saying about her. "I'd be like, 'Oh, I forgot my purse in there.'" She said that when she listened later, she would hear insults like, "She's so ghetto. I just can't." "Her boobs aren't big enough," and "I really think we should just go with a white girl."
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Tiffany Haddish caught insults on tape as Winona Ryder faced antisemitism.
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Winona Ryder said in an interview with The Sunday Times that she was overlooked for a part because she was Jewish. She added: "There are times when people have said, 'Wait, you're Jewish? But you’re so pretty.'" The Stranger Things star also revealed in a Happy Sad Confused podcast that she was in the middle of an audition when a casting director interrupted her and said, "You should not be an actress. You are not pretty enough. You should go back to wherever you came from, and you should go to school. You don't have it."
Meryl Streep revealed on The Graham Norton Show in 2015 that she was denied a role in the movie King Kong because she was "too ugly." The man said something to his son, who was in the room, in Italian, and Streep said: "Because I understand Italian, he said: 'Why do you bring me this ugly thing?'" She went on to prove HIM wrong.
