10 Actors Who Refused To Die On Screen

When an actor's been working in Hollywood long enough, it's just a matter of time before they end up dying on-screen, and that's just part of doing business, right?

Death scenes can be fun for actors to shoot and, under the right circumstances, even tie a neat bow on their character's arc throughout the film, ensuring they're remembered by audiences forever more.

But not all death scenes are created equal, and sometimes actors balk at perishing on-screen for our viewing pleasure.

The reasons for this can be myriad and complicated - perhaps they passionately felt it was the wrong creative choice and believed their character was better off left alive, or were perhaps just fed up of dying so damn often across film and TV.

And so these 10 actors all refused - at least at first - to be killed on-screen in these movies and TV shows, believing that it would either harm the production or their own stature as a performer.

In some cases they were clearly right to to bow out, while in others it's tough not to view their behaviour as flagrantly diva-ish...

Believe it or not, Kristen Stewart was actually offered a role in Scream 4 shortly before wrapping up her tenure in the Twilight franchise.

The part would've been a cameo in the movie's pre-title sequence, where she would reportedly die in unexpected fashion similar to Drew Barrymore's jaw-dropping demise in the very first Scream film.

In an interview with Slant last year, Stewart revealed that she turned the cameo down because she knew she wouldn't be able to top the subversive brilliance of Barrymore's death in the original movie. She said:

"I was like, 'I can't do a Drew. I can't touch that.' Do you know what I mean? But, yeah, so then they ended up doing, if I'm remembering correctly, a larger sequence and not just one victim."

Indeed, once Stewart turned the cameo, the filmmakers evidently pivoted and reconceived the entire opening sequence, opting instead for an incredibly meta film-within-a-film sequence entailing numerous celebrity cameos - namely Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell - and a whole pile of dead bodies.

In the same interview, however, Stewart - a professed fan of the series - didn't rule out appearing in a future Scream film. We should be so lucky.