10 Movie Casting Choices That Were Total Misdirection

4. Janet Leigh - Psycho

What Everyone Expected

Janet Leigh already had more than 30 feature film roles under her belt when she starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and audiences quite rightly assumed that her character Marion Crane would be the movie's protagonist.

Fitting all the bills of a prototypical Hitchcock leading lady - blonde and beautiful, basically - audiences of the time were totally reasonable in assuming she'd be facing off against a crazed killer for the entirety of the movie.

What We Got

In perhaps the first notable instance of a decoy protagonist bamboozling viewers, Marion is actually killed less than half-way through the film, stabbed to death in one of the most iconic movie murders of all time.

The rest of the movie shifts the perspective to Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) and boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin), who arrive at the Bates Motel to investigate Marion's whereabouts.

Casting the gorgeous starlet and plastering her face all over the marketing only for her to last barely 45 minutes was a bold move, and one that paid off brilliantly.

As with Drew Barrymore's unexpected demise in Scream, it kept audiences on their toes and likely helped prevent them from guessing the film's real twist, that motel owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) was the killer all along.

Legend dictates that Hitchcock insisted upon no late patrons being admitted to screenings of the film, in case they arrived after Leigh's death and complained about her absence from the film.

Furthermore, Leigh's agent advised her against taking the role due to its brevity, only for her to brilliantly retort, "Ah, but who are they talking about the rest of the film?"