10 Even More Movie Roles Obviously Designed For Other Actors
6. Dr. Robert Langdon In The Da Vinci Code - Harrison Ford
The Da Vinci Code was a novel written by Dan Brown that everybody owned in 2003.
You couldn't move for copies of it. There were routine floods of them in the streets! People died! Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but the book was still popular.
Naturally, it got the film treatment in 2006 with Tom Hanks playing the role of symbologist Robert Langdon. And before you ask, no "symbology" is not a real thing. They made it up for the book.
Hanks was obviously a big get for the movie, but wasn't really the dashing action hero type. This is a far cry from how Langdon is described in the books themselves - "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed."
Well, there's your actor right there!
Brown literally name dropped Ford in the books this movie is based on. That's not something somebody does by accident - he clearly wanted Han Solo for the film version!
The star was only 64 at the time, so could have played the role. His only film credit in 2006 was a movie called Firewall, which has 18% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Clearly he didn't have anything better to do, so why wasn't he cast as Langdon?