10 Actors Who Went Uncredited For Major Film Roles (And Why)

Have you ever watched the credits rolling after a film and noticed a glaring omission? Did you wonder if it was some simple data entry oversight, that somebody just forgot to add an actor’s name among their costars? The reality is, there is always a story behind the choice not to feature an actor’s name in the credits. This doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes the decision is made to have an actor’s name removed from the film’s credits. The reasons for this range from loopholes to legal entanglements, to simply doing personal favors, but more often than not, just downright vanity.

Take all of these with a heaping of salt, as some of the more ambiguous ones do sound like PR spin for behind the scenes melodrama. Just one major caveat: this list is comprised of actors who had major roles in film; it does not cover uncredited cameos, such as Cate Blanchett’s appearance in Hot Fuzz, or Will Ferrell popping up in just about every other mainstream American comedy.

Seriously, does Will Ferrell just loiter around on film sets and refuse to leave until the director offers him a cameo?

What’s up, Will? You doing okay?

Let's start the list...

10. James Earl Jones - Star Wars & The Empire Strikes Back

We’ll kick off the list with one a lot you Star Wars buffs out there may already know: The vocal performance that launched Darth Vader to be one of the most iconic movie characters of all time went uncredited for two whole films.

For the original Star Wars, James Earl Jones asked not to be credited. Part of Jones’s decision was because he considered David Prowse’s performance inside the Vader costume to be the more defining of the two performances. Prowse, after all, had to wear that darn thing and he spoke all of Vader’s lines from inside the helmet. Prowse was told by writer-director George Lucas that all of his dialogue would be re-recorded in post-production, but what Prowse didn’t know was that Lucas planned to overdub his vocal performance with an actor who had a deeper, more menacing voice. That would not be the last time Lucas pulled the old switcheroo on one of his cast members, now is it?

In keeping with Jones’ decision to be uncredited for playing the voice of Darth Vader, the second installment, The Empire Strikes Back, did not have the actor’s name in the credits, either. By the time of the final film in the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi, Jones changed his mind, citing that by that point, everyone already knew that it was him performing the voice of Vader. Then in 1997, when Lucas Film rereleased the trilogy in Special Edition form, the actor’s name was retroactively added to A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Wookie-pajamas?

9. David Hyde Pierce - Hellboy

During filming of Guillermo Del Toro’s 2004 comic book adaptation, Hellboy, actor, mime, and contortionist Doug Jones portrayed the role of the genius-level intellectual, psychic, and amphibious Abe Sapien. Hyde Pierce was known for his role as neurotic, well-cultured psychiatrist on television’s Frasier, and was hired to give Abe Sapien a voice audiences would recognize.

According to IMDB, in a move echoing back to James Earl Jones before him, Pierce “refused a credit because he felt that Abe was entirely Doug's creation and did not wish to detract from his performance.” Then for the sequel, 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the voice acting gig was given back to Doug Jones. Jones would then go on to play a similar amphibious role in Del Toro’s 2017 Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water.

Hmm, just think, that could have been merman Niles Crane making out with Sally Hawkins instead.

8. Rob Lowe - Tommy Boy

After playing heartthrobs all through the 1980s, actor Rob Lowe’s career took a decidedly different turn when he started showing up in mainstream comedies such as Wayne’s World, Tommy Boy, and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, every time playing a villainous, albeit hunky, twerp. What you may not know is that his role in Tommy Boy as the con artist stepbrother to Chris Farley’s titular character, went completely uncredited.

The reasons for this came down to scheduling conflicts. Lowe was originally supposed to play (you’re not going to believe this) the role that eventually went to David Spade. Yes, that’s right. After Lowe’s appearance in Wayne’s World, the actor was ready to step into more comedic roles, and was cast in Tommy Boy to play the uptight straight man against Chris Farley’s bumbling man-child. However, Lowe had a previous obligation to star in a TV mini-series based on Stephen King’s The Stand and because of the overlapping shooting schedules, he could no longer make the time commitment to play the second lead in Tommy Boy. Lowe’s contract for The Stand even went so far as to say that he could not have another starring role in a film or TV show at the same time as it might detract from the big-budget miniseries. His role was recast with Spade (thankfully).

As a favor to Chris Farley, with whom Lowe had become good friends, he stayed in the film by taking on the much smaller role of the stepbrother and took his name off the film in a sneaky way of getting around that stipulation in his contract for the miniseries. Without Lowe doing this solid to his friend Farley, Tommy Boy may not have been the memorable comedy it is today.

7. Kenneth Branagh - Swing Kids

This next entry is one where the reasons seem pretty suspect. 1993’s Disney film, Swing Kids, was about a group of young men in Nazi Germany who rebelled against a ban on big band music. Although it was released to mixed reviews, it has since become somewhat of a cult classic, and it did help launch the career of future Batman, Christian Bale.

In the film, Kenneth Branagh plays the head of the local SS who tries to recruit one of the swing kids, played by Robert Sean Leonard, to enlisting with the Gestapo. Branagh is the main heavy in the film, but his name was pulled from the credits before the film premiered.

Over the years there have been conflicting accounts for why this came to be. The Los Angeles Times ran a story about it a week before the Disney film opened back in 1993. In the article, Branagh’s assistant and agent are quoted as stating that the established Shakespearian actor and filmmaker gave up his top billing so that his name wouldn’t take the spotlight away from the film’s two younger male leads, Bale and Leonard. The LA Times article does cast some doubt toward this PR rationalization, leaving it in question whether Branagh simply didn’t care for the film and didn’t want his name associated with it. That seems the much likelier story.

6. Henry Winkler - Scream

Henry Winkler will always go down in history of one of the most recognizable characters in TV history: Arthur Fonzarelli aka “the Fonz” on the classic 1970s sitcom, Happy Days. That had a lot to do with why his name was left off the credits of the 1996 horror film, Scream. One of the most memorable parts of the horror spoof is good old Fonzie showing up as a creepy high school principal to only then be brutally murdered by one of his own students midway through the film. Winkler’s appearance was one of many elements of the film’s pop-culture commentary, and it was also one of the surprises that made it so darn fun.

The final credits of the film shows clips of each of the cast members, but the film’s producers decided to not include Winkler because the lovable image of the aged Fonz might be too jarring and could bring theater-goers down from the adrenaline rush built up by the film’s climax. Winkler concurred with the producer’s aesthetic choice and went without credit. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Just imagine right after the bloodbath at the end of Scream, all of a sudden seeing a picture of Henry Winkler and being reminded, that’s right, the freaking Fonz was in the movie! Woulda undone some of the frightful tingles in the spine, wouldn’t it? You can just imagine desensitized teens leaving cinemas in 1996 going, “Ayyy! I’m gonna gut you like a fish!” “No, I’m gonna gut you like a fish! Ayyy!”

5. Don Cheadle - Ocean's Eleven

2001’s heist comedy, Ocean’s Eleven, boasted a dream cast with the likes of Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon. The film’s title refers to the number of crooks Clooney’s Danny Ocean assembles to pull of a casino robbery. But if you’re counting the number of robbers in the film, and then count the number of them listed in the credits, you will only come up with ten. That’s because actor Don Cheadle, best known now for playing James “War Machine” Rhodes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, asked that his name be removed from the film.

Cheadle, who employed a Cockney accent for his role as a demolitions expert, actually had a pretty reasonable argument for this. He was coming hot off the success of the Best Picture Oscar-winner, Traffic, in which he had a major role, and which Ocean’s Eleven director, Steven Soderbergh, had also helmed. In fact, Ocean’s Eleven marked the third time the actor and director had worked together.

In 2001, Cheadle felt he was owed the coveted “name-above-the-title” credit, especially since Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, whose names did go above the title, had not worked with Soderbergh before. When the production company and Cheadle’s representation could not reach a deal, he simply said, “Take my name off it.” Cheadle did come back for the next two films in the franchise, those times reaching a deal to put his name above the titles.

Another interesting caveat about the billing of Ocean’s Eleven is that Julia Roberts was given the “introducing” credit, which may read as a joke. But in business terms, Roberts took the introducing credit so that she could appear in the film at a much lower fee than her usual $20 million that she was making per film at the time. That’s just some more Hollywood negotiation jargon at work.

4. Gary Oldman - Hannibal

Say what you will about 2001’s Silence of the Lambs gore-fest sequel, Hannibal, but perhaps the most memorable character in that entire debacle was Gary Oldman’s turn as Mason Verger, a former patient of Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter, and the only one of his victims to live to tell the tale. Apart from Hopkins and Julliane Moore (who replaced Jodie Foster as FBI agent Clarice Starling), Oldman’s character was the third-biggest focus of the film, serving as a second antagonist. Verger spent the film using his inherited fortune to track down Lecter so he could have the honors of killing “Hannibal the Cannibal” himself, with the poetic justice styling of feeding him to a stable full of wild boars.

An established leading man at the time, Oldman lobbied to get his name above the film’s title along with its other two stars. The producers had differing opinions, though. The long-awaited sequel to the smash hit, Silence of the Lambs, 2001’s Hannibal promised to be a showdown between Lecter and Starling. Putting a third actor’s name above the title could have spelled confusion for excited audiences. When producers shot down his request to have his name above the title, Oldman took his name off the film entirely. When asked about this decision, Oldman has stated that since he spent most of the film under heavy prosthetics, he felt that playing Verger “anonymously” allowed him to experiment more with the role—and check it out, Oldman is really hamming it up with a country accent reminiscent of the Looney Tunes character, Foghorn Leghorn.

We can’t help but wonder if Oldman is kicking himself for not taking his name off the film Tiptoes two years later when he played, of all things, a little person.

3. Kathleen Turner: Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Ah, Jessica Rabbit, the animated femme fatale who launched a whole generation of Hentai enthusiasts. 1988’s animation-live action hybrid, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, featured an iconic vocal performance by the smoky-voiced actress, Kathleen Turner. The role was small, but pivotal in that the murder plot revolved around her patty-caking affair with Marvin Acme, the head of the Acme Corporation and owner of Toontown. When Marvin winds up dead, Jessica’s jealous husband, Roger Rabbit, is suspected of murdering the mogul. Although Jessica Rabbit was one of the most memorable characters in the film, Turner was not credited for her performance. The actress has since stated that she played the part as a favor to director Robert Zemeckis, who had also directed her in Romancing the Stone.

In the years since, there has been much speculation about whether Turner’s claims that she did it “just for fun” and “as a favor” are completely accurate. While it’s fun to think that she went uncredited to give the character an air of mystery, given the previous entries on this list, it’s much more likely that Turner didn’t get the contract she desired. This suspicion is strengthened when considering Turner did receive credit on subsequent performances as Jessica Rabbit. The moral: film contracts aren’t bad, they’re just drawn that way.

2. Robin Williams - The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen

Poor Terry Gilliam. Is there a single film the celebrated director has ever made that wasn’t plagued with production problems? For 1988’s fairy tale adventure, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, there were many budget cuts and production was even shutdown to accommodate for reconfiguring. Originally, Sean Connery was supposed to play the role of the King of the Moon who puts Baron Munchausen in jail because of his romantic past with his wife. However, the section of the film that took place on the moon had to be severely downsized because of budgetary restraints, dwindling what was supposed to be a cast of 2,000 extras down to just two: the King and Queen. Connery didn’t like this change of direction and bowed out of the film.

In a scurry to recast the role, Gilliam asked his fellow Monty Python mate, Michael Palin, to take over the role, and Palin agreed. But then just days before Palin’s scenes were set to start shooting, another Python, Eric Idle, told Gilliam that his friend Robin Williams expressed an interest in playing the bonkers villain as it was right in his wheelhouse of esotericism. Gilliam then had to phone up Michael Palin to tell him he was now out of the role, joking, “Sorry, you’re not worth as much money as Robin.”

Although, Williams’ entrance into the film came with a catch: his management didn’t want him to be credited. According to Gilliam, “The deal was that we couldn't use his name because his agents said, ‘We don't want you pimping his ass for your film.’ And I thought, ‘What are you talking about?’ But that was the attitude, so that’s why Robin is not credited. The credit says the king of the moon is ‘Ray D. Tutto,' which is Italian for ‘king of everybody.’ And that was another ridiculous one, that we couldn’t use Robin to help sell the film.” I think we can all agree though, if anyone deserves the title of “king of everybody,” it’s Robin Williams. RIP.

1. Tom Cruise - Tropic Thunder

Writer-director Ben Stiller’s 2008 action movie farce, Tropic Thunder, followed the troubled production of an Oscar-baiting film set during the Vietnam War. The comedy is a meta-commentary on the state of Hollywood and the lengths to which some will go to win some coveted gold statuettes. In the film, mega-star Tom Cruise plays the wildly off-brand character of Les Grossman, the head of a Hollywood studio. Initially, Cruise was slated to play Ben Stiller’s character’s agent—a role that would eventually be played by Matthew McConaughey.

The character of Les Grossman was actually Cruise’s idea. He suggested to Stiller that they needed to have an over-the-top studio head portrayed in the film, and then offered to play the character. So the two put their heads together and created the character of “Les Grossman.” The role required Cruise to wear so many prosthetics (including bald cap, wig, a fat suit, and even fat prosthetic hands) that it made Cruise barely recognizable. The notion to leave him uncredited was inspired by the idea that nobody would recognize him; audiences would struggle to figure out who was playing Grossman, and when they finally did, the revelation would be a big surprise. So to keep the surprise under wraps, Cruise’s name was left off all marketing for the film until after its initial release.