10 Iconic Movie Roles Almost Played By Totally Different Actors

Movies have been generating pop culture icons since the Golden Age of Hollywood, and with the industry still raking in unquantifiable quantities of dollars every year, this trend shows no signs of stopping.

And all the richer we are for it, graced as our screens have been with so many definitive performances spanning all genres - think Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800, Eddie Murphy as Norbit.

Okay, maybe not that last one, but so distinctive are some of these performances, that it can be all but impossible to separate the actor from the role. Nonetheless, there are a whole host of iconic parts out there that originally went to someone else, before fate, luck, financiers and studio schedules intervened.

Can you picture Dougray Scott leading the X-Men? Leonardo DiCaprio introducing you to Huey Lewis & the News? Ben Affleck and Matt Damon heading up Brokeback Mountain together? No? Well, you better start trying because these 10 actors were originally going to play some thoroughly iconic parts, and for better or worse (in most cases better), they got turfed out in favour of someone else.

1987's Predator is known for being one of the films that solidified Arnold Schwarzenegger's status as an '80s action movie icon, as well as launching a decades-long franchise about muscle-bound alien hunters with grotesque faces, but it also almost made a name for another icon of the era.

With only a handful of films under his karate belt, Jean-Claude Van Damme was not a big name in Hollywood or anywhere else, and was originally set to star opposite Arnie as Predator's original Yautja, suited and booted and unrecognisable for the duration.

Whether this would have boosted the muscles from Brussels' brand or not is unclear, given the limited exposure of a character in full-body, identity-obscuring prosthetics, but in any case, it simply wasn't meant to be.

Ostensibly, Van Damme couldn't get on with the cumbersome suit - which, at this point, was more bug-like than apex, well, predator - and, after a few days moaning everyone's ear off and clashing with producer Joel Silver, he walked off set (or got fired by Silver, depending on whose account you take as true). Kevin Peter Hall went on to play the character in the movie instead, and although some rough footage of Van Damme's Predator made it into the final cut, this was not present in any noticeable fashion.