10 Iconic Movie Villains (Almost Played By Someone Else)

10. Eddie Redmayne As Kylo Ren

One entry on the incredibly short list of things that most people can agree on about the enormously divisive Star Wars sequels is that Adam Driver was well cast as conflicted emo Vader fanboy Kylo Ren.

The guy from Girls was far from the only option under consideration for the role of the sometime Ben Solo, however. Virtually every young actor in Hollywood seems to have been up for one part or another in the new Star Wars trilogy.

One that we know got as far as auditioning for the black-masked mass murderer is Eddie Redmayne, an actor whose best known role is as an awkward animal-loving nice guy in JK Rowling's Fantastic Beasts series.

Redmayne later revealed that he had a "catastrophically bad" reading for Kylo. "With films that top secret, they don’t give you the actual lines. So they give you a scene from Pride and Prejudice, but then they tell you you’re auditioning for the baddie. If you’re me, you then put some ridiculous voice on," the Oscar-winning actor recalled, claiming to have blown it completely by doing a Vader breathing impression.

Honestly, from watching Redmayne's camp, shouty, scenery-chewing take on a space opera villain in Jupiter Ascending, it's hard not to be thankful that he lost out to Driver here, whatever else you might think about the choices that the Star Wars sequels made.