10 Actors Who Took Movie Roles For Weird Reasons

Imagine working as a successful actor, having offers for work coming at you from all angles, and having to choose which ones you want to do and which ones to refuse. How would you make that choice? What draws actors into the roles they take? 

With different people come often vastly different wants and needs, and a spectrum of motivations to get those things. What's important and valued to one person may be far from the top of another person's priority list, and of course, that stretches through to Hollywood stars as well, particularly when some names are likely getting offered more roles than they could ever have time to play. What makes them accept the ones that they do?

This is the movie industry, filled with as many big characters off the screen as there are on it, and some of the reasons for them taking a job are not exactly what you'd call expected or usual. Some have accepted other things rather than a monetary fee, some have agreed to star in a movie with the sole aim of making sure someone else didn't, while one actor got caught in the middle of a spectacular case of mistaken identity. 

There are times when actors develop connections to characters that go above and beyond what you would typically consider to be the usual. Ryan Reynolds gave his everything into lobbying to play Wade Wilson, while Jodie Foster refused to return for Hannibal in 2000 out of respect for Clarice Starling.

Then there is Vin Diesel, who you might assume was connected to Dom Toretto as a character more than anybody else he has played before, though it may be that Riddick is at the top of that particular list.

After the success of the Fast and the Furious, Vin Diesel didn't appear in the sequel, though he returned to show his face in the third chapter of the franchise, Tokyo Drift, if only for the sake of Riddick. 

The Chronicles of Riddick didn't exactly set the box office on fire when it released, and so the franchise's future was up in the air when Diesel leveraged a deal that saw him return as Dom Toretto in 2006. In exchange, the rights to Riddick went to his production company, One Race. Not only did this bring the actor back to the Fast character that he would go on to play through to the present and beyond, but it allowed the production of Riddick in 2013, and ultimately the upcoming sequel, Riddick: Furya. Not a bad move at all.