10 Actors Who Threatened To Quit Famous Movies

7. Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas)

Paul Sorvino as Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas
Warner Bros. Pictures

Few actors would turn down the opportunity to appear in a Martin Scorsese movie, and even fewer would sign up for one, do four weeks of pre-production, then quit three days before shooting was scheduled to begin.

But that was the position Paul Sorvino found himself in while working on Scorsese's 1990 crime epic Goodfellas, with the actor finding it difficult to bring out his character's aggressive, brutish nature, which gave him cold feet.

At the Tribeca Film Festival in 2015, Sorvino stated that portraying thug Paulie Cicero was "so far from me... I'm a poet, I'm an opera singer, I'm an author... none of it is gangster." So, he called his manager and asked to be released from the movie, but when he "found" the character after noticing his own stern expression in the mirror, he decided to continue with the project.

Goodfellas is widely considered one of Scorsese's best movies, and one of the greatest achievements in cinema, full-stop. It was also nominated for six Oscars (including Best Picture), so Sorvino is probably quite relieved he didn't jump ship.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!