10 Actors Who SAVED Their Careers By Turning Down Movie Roles

The 1986 comedy Soul Man follows a young man who, in order to qualify for a college scholarship for black students, overdoses on tanning pills to change the colour of his skin. Yup.

Though the film's heart is mostly in the right place by drawing attention to the suffering of black people in everyday life, the decision to have white actor C. Thomas Howell don blackface was widely criticised, enough that it effectively derailed Howell's promising leading man career, confining him to supporting roles for most of the last 35 years.

Yet the part nearly went to another actor entirely, with Tim Robbins initially offered the lead, which he ultimately had to turn down due to scheduling conflicts with his work on - wait for it - Howard the Duck.

Needless to say, Robbins' career likely would've been haunted by appearing in blackface just as Howell's is, and may well have prevented him from winning juicy leading roles in the likes of Jacob's Ladder, The Player, The Hudsucker Proxy, and The Shawshank Redemption in the decade that followed.