10 Actors That Gambled Their Careers By NOT Taking Huge Movie Roles

The 1995 Oscars have gone down in history as one of the most controversial award shows of all time. The year had been teeming with projects that still to this day have cultural significance. Movies like Shawshank Redemption, Little Women, Pulp Fiction and... Forrest Gump?

Yes that's right, Forrest Gump was not only nominated for Oscars that year, but it also won the coveted Best Picture Award.

But what does this have to do with John Travolta? Well, he himself was nominated at the Oscars that year, for a supposedly career-redefining role in the Quintin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction, but Travolta as well as his movie lost out to Forrest Gump and its lead actor, Tom Hanks, at every turn.

But Travolta could have cashed in on these winnings and critical acclaim if he had made a few different choices when choosing his movies that year, as he was originally offered the titular role in Forrest Gump.

Travolta ultimately decided to not take on the role, as he thought that he'd have to tread very carefully with a role like that.

As for whether the gamble paid off, well the answer seems to change as time continues. At first, when both Forrest Gump at Pulp Fiction came out, it seemed that Travolta had made the right decision as his performance was the talk of the town. But then after the award season, it seemed maybe he'd made the wrong choice after all.

Since then, Travolta's career has seemed to flip flop from good to bad every other year, while Tom Hanks has stayed a significant actor in Hollywood the whole time. Is that a side effect of Travolta's original gamble, or a symptom of something else?