Whenever you hear the words "last minute replacement," your mind probably goes back to something awful that you saw once on account of the fact that whatever it was you paid to see originally couldn't be bothered to turn up. You know, when you decided to bite the bullet and go see
Les Miserables with the girlfriend, only for the good Jean Valjean to be off with malaria or something, and now you've got to sit and watch his understudy. In other words, replacements are not considered to be very good, because nobody wanted them in the first place, and
can't we just have a refund or something instead? Sometimes, though, a last minute replacement can be a thing of colossal beauty, such as in the cases of the 10 movie roles I've assembled here. Yes, every single one of these actors jumped into famous roles as last minute replacements. Not only did they prove themselves to be incredibly inspired choices, they also emerged as far better choices than those guys who were picked originally (not that we'd ever know, I guess). So much so, in fact, that we genuinely can't imagine these movies existing without said actors cast in these massively iconic roles...
Please Note: I'm not doing Tom Selleck/Harrison Ford/Indiana Jones anywhere on this list. Everybody knows that one. And if you didn't, you do now, I guess.