10 Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Roles For Stupid Reasons

7. Will Smith Wanted The Role To Be Bigger - Django (Django Unchained)

The Role

The protagonist of Quentin Tarantino's blood-soaked western classic, a freed slave who alongside German bounty hunter Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz), seeks to retrieve his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from Southern slave owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Before Tarantino ultimately cast Jamie Foxx to play Django, he came very close to casting both The Wire's Michael K. Williams and Will Smith. Williams ended up losing out in the final stretch, but Smith was actually offered the part in earnest before turning it down.

Why He Turned It Down

Smith is notoriously picky about his projects in one very specific way: he doesn't do a lot of supporting ensemble work and likes to develop projects that are focused around him as a star vehicle.

And even when it came to an awards-friendly prestige project like a Tarantino movie, he still wouldn't let this slide, turning the part down because he felt that Django wasn't the true lead of the film.

Smith said in an interview years after Django's release, "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!' I thought it was brilliant. Just not for me."

While the film went on to receive five Oscar nominations including Best Picture (along with two wins), Smith decided instead to co-star with his son Jaden in M. Night Shyamalan's atrocious After Earth and won two Razzie awards, for Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Screen Combo (shared with Jaden).

Needless to say, it was a bad move all around, and Smith eventually called After Earth "the most painful failure" of his career. Foxx was terrific as Django, at least.