10 Movie Roles Obviously Designed For Other Actors

That's right - the role where Bruce Willis somewhat famously plays a douchebag version of himself wasn't actually written for Bruce Willis at all.

Writer Art Linson and director Barry Levinson's Hollywood satire follows Robert De Niro's stressed-out film producer Ben from set to boardroom to set. Amongst many other memorable moments, it features a subplot in which Bruce Willis turns up to shoot Ben's movie with an impressively luxurious beard which he refuses to shave off, despite it being completely inappropriate for the part.

Well, that part was originally intended for Alec Baldwin - because it was based on Alec Baldwin himself.

You see, What Just Happened is a fictionalised retelling of stories from Linson's own memoir of the same name. In his book, Linson recounts Baldwin turning up to shoot 1997's The Edge for director Lee Tamahori with – yup – an impressively luxurious beard, which he refused to shave off.

Baldwin's character was a fashion photographer whose plane crashes in the wilderness. His having the beard at the end of the movie made sense. Having it at the beginning made no sense whatsoever – yet Baldwin had to be threatened with being fired from the movie and sued by the studio before he would shave it off.

De Niro (who was also a producer on the film) had originally approached Baldwin to play himself, thinking his famously prickly friend might have developed a sense of humour about the whole thing. Reader, he had not - leading to Willis being cast in his place.