15 Actors Who Were Fired or Recast From Movies Mid-Production

Mariska Hargitay was hired as Queen Dulcea and flew to Australia for the shoot, then went home for the holidays when a lengthy delay hit production. "I call them, and I'm like, 'Okay, I'm ready!'" she told NBC Insider. "And they were like, 'Sweetie, you're good, don't worry about it.' They fired me." Her account of the reason: she'd wanted to be home for Christmas. Gabrielle Fitzpatrick took over as Dulcea in the finished film.

Dougray Scott lost Wolverine not because of his performance, but because another blockbuster wouldn't let him go. "Tom Cruise didn't let me do it," Scott told The Daily Telegraph. "We were doing Mission: Impossible, and he was like, 'You've got to stay and finish the film.'" Production on Mission: Impossible II ran long enough to collide with X-Men's schedule, and the filmmakers turned to a then-little-known Hugh Jackman instead.

A famously contentious relationship with Sylvester Stallone brought Richard Gere's time as Chico to an early end (over, of all things, a mustard-stained chicken sandwich). "I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car," Stallone recalled in a 2006 Ain't It Cool News Q&A, cited by SlashFilm. Director Martin Davidson chose to keep Stallone and replaced Gere with Perry King.

Ryan Gosling gained around 60 pounds (joining a long line of actors who've transformed their bodies for a role) because he envisioned grieving father Jack Salmon as heavier. "I really believed he should be 210 pounds," Gosling told The Hollywood Reporter. Peter Jackson took the general blame years later, though he stopped short of confirming the specifics: "Anytime we recast an actor, it's actually our fault because we didn't get the casting right and we cast the wrong person for a role," Jackson told Entertainment Weekly at the Cannes Film Festival. The creative disconnect cost Gosling the job just days before filming, and Mark Wahlberg was quickly brought aboard.

Al Pacino had recorded Eduardo "El Macho" Pérez's dialogue and was still appearing in promotional material when he was replaced less than six weeks before the film's Annecy festival premiere. Both sides stayed tight-lipped on specifics, citing only "creative differences," Variety reported.

Benjamin Bratt took on the unusual task of rerecording an entire animated performance on a tight deadline; producer Chris Meledandri called the swap unprecedented, telling Variety: "I'm not aware of any of the major animated films of the last 15 years that … has brought an actor in at such a late stage."

Sean Young had already begun playing Tess Trueheart when she was removed from the production. According to Best Life, the reason given years later, in 2008, was that filmmakers felt her performance wasn't sufficiently maternal, though Young has offered a starkly different account (she's said she was let go days after rebuffing an advance from Warren Beatty, an allegation Beatty has denied). Glenne Headly inherited the part either way.

Judy Garland signed on as Helen Lawson with characteristic confidence: "Let's face it: the role calls for an old pro over 40. That's for me." But tension on set, compounded by her struggles with alcohol, cut the shoot short. Co-star Patty Duke later described the breakdown to Far Out Magazine: "There were gentlemen around her who supplied her with wine and other things, and so when she finally did get called to the set she couldn't function very well." The production dismissed the legendary performer during filming and handed the role to Susan Hayward.

The Predator originally moved like a lean, fast-footed hunter, with Jean-Claude Van Damme built into a rubber suit designed for the role. "It was a nightmare, because the outfit was made of rubber and it was so hot in Mexico," Van Damme told Yahoo Entertainment. He and producer Joel Silver clashed over the suit's demands (he's called it an "ill discussion" between them), and the creature was redesigned from scratch, with the much taller Kevin Peter Hall becoming the Predator audiences ultimately saw.

Kel O'Neill's departure as Eli Sunday has long been chalked up to Daniel Day-Lewis' famously immersive process, but O'Neill himself has rejected that explanation. "It wasn't drinks every night with Daniel on set, but there's a fundamental decency to the way he comports himself in those environments that gets lost in the shuffle of these rumors," O'Neill told The Playlist, pointing instead to his own strained creative connection with director Paul Thomas Anderson: "An actor should, with every ounce of their humanity, be attempting to give the director what he or she wants." After two or three weeks of filming, his name disappeared from the shooting schedule, and Paul Dano (already cast as Paul Sunday) was promoted to portray both brothers.

Age worked against Gene Hackman in an unusual way: director Mike Nichols decided he looked too young to convincingly play Mr. Robinson, reasoning that the actors playing Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson "needed to be a whole generation apart." Dustin Hoffman remembered Hackman seeing it coming, recalling to SlashFilm: "Gene said to me while he was taking a leak in the men's room ... 'I think I'm getting fired.'" Hackman was dismissed roughly three weeks into filming, and Murray Hamilton took his place (freeing Hackman to move on to Bonnie and Clyde, which earned him an Oscar nomination).

Playing the Tin Man turned genuinely dangerous for Buddy Ebsen. "He woke up and thought he was dying. He absolutely could not breathe. His fingers and toes were curled back on themselves, and he was completely cramped up," his daughter Kiki Ebsen told Fox News of the reaction to the aluminum dust used in his makeup ("real aluminum dust. It was in the air"). He spent two weeks in the hospital under an oxygen tank, and doctors called it a "breakdown of the nervous system." MGM moved forward without him and cast Jack Haley instead, though traces of Ebsen's work remained in the finished movie's musical soundtrack.

Spending an entire performance behind V's mask proved untenable for James Purefoy, who left about a month into production. It's often framed as a firing, but Purefoy has maintained he chose to leave after the mask made it impossible to give the performance he wanted (ScreenRant reports he cited problems "giving an entire performance behind a mask that hindered his voice"). Hugo Weaving, who'd trained for mask work at drama school, replaced him and rerecorded the dialogue, while some footage reportedly featuring Purefoy's physical performance remained in the finished film.

Princess Fiona originally sounded nothing like Cameron Diaz. Janeane Garofalo had already voiced the role opposite original Shrek star Chris Farley. She was cast, film historian Jim Hill has written, because her "somewhat abrasive, sarcastic comic persona would provide a perfect counterpoint to Chris Farley's sweet if somewhat dim take on Shrek." After Farley's death and Mike Myers' arrival remade the project into something sadder and gentler, Garofalo's version of Fiona was, in Hill's words, "now thought to be just too downbeat for the film." Garofalo was dropped without receiving a clear explanation (or so she has said), and the role went to a "much sunnier" Cameron Diaz.

Chicken Little was initially conceived as a girl, and Holly Hunter had already recorded dialogue for the character before Disney reversed course. The order came from the top, according to producer Randy Fullmer: then-CEO Michael Eisner told the team, per ScreenRant, "I don't want it to be a girl, I want it to be a boy." Director Mark Dindal chalked the decision up to the era's market research: "That was the wisdom at the time ... until Frozen comes out and makes $1 billion." The protagonist became a boy, wiping out Hunter's performance and eventually putting Zach Braff behind the microphone instead.

John Lithgow had recorded the role of Poppa during an earlier incarnation of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur, before the film underwent what he called a total rebuild. "They have now dismantled it and completely reimagined it, and it is a fantastic new story," Lithgow said at the time. When Peter Sohn took over as director from Bob Peterson, nearly the entire original voice cast was replaced (Frances McDormand was the lone holdover), with Jeffrey Wright eventually taking over as Poppa in the finished film.