10 Actors Who Didn't Understand Their Own Movie
5. Bill Murray - Garfield
This entry is a bit different because it's not exactly right to say Bill Murray didn't understand Garfield, it's more accurate to say, he didn't understand what he was getting into when he opted to be in the film. Murray is famously indifferent to the normal trappings of Hollywood, and he doesn't even have an agent.
He has a phone number; if you call and he answers, he might listen to your pitch. If you can't get a hold of him, you're pretty much out of luck. He's weird, but he always delivers, and who could say he didn't give life to Garfield?
His misunderstanding arose because of the name of the guy who wrote the script. That was Joel Cohen, and when Murray saw that he was offered a script by the legendary talent of Joel [and Ethan] Coen, he agreed to star in the film.
The only problem was, this was Joel Cohen of Daddy Day Camp and Cheaper By The Dozen Fame. This wasn't Joel Coen of The Big Lebowski and Fargo fame, but Murray had agreed to be in the picture, so he did the job. His SNAFU was talked about in a Redditt AMA, in which he said:
"I had a hilarious experience with Garfield. I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said "Joel Cohen" on it. And I wasn't thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen."