10 Actors Who SAVED Their Careers By Turning Down Movie Roles
8. Natalie Portman Turned Down Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
Don't feel bad if you didn't even know there was a second Dirty Dancing movie released in 2004.
This prequel to the classic 1987 dance romance flick ditched Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey - though Swayze did appear in a minor cameo, for which he was paid a stonking $5 million - for new leads Diego Luna and Romola Garai, and is about as cynical and forgettable a follow-up as you could expect.
Bizarrely, Natalie Portman was initially offered Garai's role of bookish lead Katey Miller, but quite sensibly turned it down.
Though Garai's career has been relatively solid since, even netting two Golden Globe nods for her performances in Emma and The Hour, the outcome for Portman could've been much more dire.
Portman's standing in Hollywood was already extremely questionable at the time given the disappointment of the first two Star Wars prequels, which Portman later admitted made producers assume she was a "horrible actress."
Portman turned down Havana Nights and instead chose to star in Mike Nichols' drama Closer, which in addition to being a commercial success netted her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.
It isn't exaggerating to say that the avalanche of three disappointing Star Wars movies combined with a Dirty Dancing prequel nobody asked for could've been the death knell for Portman's career.
However, Closer helped nudge her towards a slew of more worthy dramatic roles in the years that followed, especially V for Vendetta and Black Swan (the latter winning her a Best Actress Oscar).