10 Actors Who Refused To Make Sacrifices For Roles
1. Will Smith Needed To Be The Lead - Django Unchained
On the subject of roles being seen as a "leading part", here's that time Will Smith was adamant that the role of Django Freeman in a film literally titled Django Unchained was most definitely not the focus of Quentin Tarantino's feature.
Despite Jamie Foxx going on to produce one of the most compelling and nuanced performances of his career in the part of the heroic lead, alongside the likes of Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Samuel L. Jackson, Smith just wasn't convinced the role was big enough upon reading the script. And he wasn't going to play second fiddle to Waltz's Dr King Schultz.
Smith told Entertainment Weekly later, "Django wasn't the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead. The other character was the lead! I was like, 'No, Quentin, please, I need to kill the bad guy!'"
The Hollywood megastar would also go on to explain that he envisioned this tale as a "love story" and not a "vengeance story", with this direction for the overall way the story was told being something that Smith wasn't happy sacrificing in favour of an excessively violent end product.