10 More Actors Who SAVED Their Careers By Turning Down Movie Roles
These actors were smart to turn down these calamitous movie parts.
Being an actor is one hell of a precarious job, and no matter how talented a performer might be, it's incredibly difficult to pick consistently strong projects.
No script or star director alone can guarantee a quality end product, and so it's little surprise that even the very best actors have suffered major career setbacks from appearing in dud films.
Conversely, though, there are those actors who have managed to avert disaster by turning down a film which ended up flopping critically if not also commercially, as harmed the career of the actor who eventually took the part.
And so, as a sequel to our previous piece on the very subject, here are 10 more actors who saved their careers by turning down movie roles.
These actors all had the good sense or good luck to turn down these projects, each of which flamed out where it mattered most, leaving the actors involved to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward.
Even great actors are only ever a few historic duds away from possible career collapse, but these actors clearly saw the writing on the wall...
10. Keanu Reeves Turned Down Speed 2: Cruise Control
Given that 1994's Speed was a storming commercial success for Keanu Reeves, his decision not to return for 1997's Speed 2: Cruise Control was met with many raised eyebrows.
Hell, studio Fox took enough offence that they effectively blacklisted Reeves from their projects for the better part of a decade, and while this could've marked a dire downturn for Reeves' career, it was ultimately anything but.
Rather than star in Speed 2, which was a Razzie-winning box office flop with Jason Patrick replacing Reeves, Reeves instead briefly performed Hamlet on stage, co-starred with Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, and then headlined a little movie called The Matrix.
While on paper this weirdo sci-fi passion project from the directors of erotic thriller Bound could've been a total mess, it became one of the most defining action films of the 1990s, birthed a media franchise, and cemented itself as Reeves' most iconic role.
Had Reeves agreed to Speed 2, it's safe to say he would've missed the boat - or rather, not.