10 Movie Roles Obviously Designed For Other Actors

Blow Dry is a case study in the horrors of studio micro-management. There may be no other film in history where the entire cast were all clearly intended to be practically anyone other than who they actually hired.

It’s fair to say that twenty years ago Oscar-winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy didn't have the Hollywood clout he probably enjoys today. Beaufoy’s first feature was The Full Monty, 1997’s unexpectedly massive comedy about laid-off Sheffield steelworkers who form a male stripper troupe.

The film featured a cast of virtual unknowns, most of whom came from the north of England - but when he attempted to duplicate the trick with his script for Never Better, about rival hairstylists in Yorkshire, Beaufoy found his film placed with Miramax and the infamous Harvey Weinstein.

Suddenly there were lists of Hollywood-famous actors flying about, mostly over his head. Even director Paddy Breathnach had little control over who was cast… which is how a movie supposedly about the authentic lives of working-class northern hairdressers, dealing with terminal illness and LGBT themes, ended up starring Natasha Richardson, Alan Rickman and Bill Nighy (Londoners), Rachel Griffiths (Australian) and Josh Hartnett (American) absolutely murdering Yorkshire accents.

The result was, to put it mildly, horrible. Unable to fix it, Beaufoy bowed out to make way for another writer. However, since the whole point was to play up the connection with The Full Monty, he wasn’t allowed to remove his name from the film. Instead, in a towering moment of English passive-aggression, he asked for his credit to read, ‘Based on the screenplay Never Better by Simon Beaufoy’.