20 Actors Who Turned Down Major Movie Roles

20. Leonardo DiCaprio - Many, Many Roles

It's safe to say Leonardo DiCaprio has been around. Outside of taking forever to finally win an Oscar, the guy has been in some of cinema's biggest films of the last two and a half decades. He was great in Titanic, Romeo and Juliet, Blood Diamond, Body of Lies, Basketball Diaries, Wolf of Wall Street...yeah, he's had some solid input to Hollywood.

And since he's one of the world's biggest stars, it's inevitable that he would have to turn down some of the great roles coming his way. Back in 2005, he was approached to take the lead role in Brokeback Mountain, but turned it down because wanted to pursue other ventures. The role in question ended up being filled by Heath Ledger.

More recently, he was also approached to take the role of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. He had expressed interest in playing the mathematician, so much so that Warner Bros bought the script just to have him in it. He eventually passed on the opportunity, however, leading Benedict Cumberbatch to fill the role.

He also turned down the roles of Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) in Boogie Nights, Neo (Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix, Norman Bates (Christian Bale) in American Psycho, and turned down an appearance (weirdly) in Hocus Pocus.

Needless to say, though, that none of these decisions have negatively effected his career.