10 Roles You Didn't Know Robin Williams Almost Played

2. Jack Torrance - The Shining

Although Jack Nicholson was director Stanley Kubrick€™s first choice to play the central role of Jack Torrance, at once point Williams was also on the shortlist to play the character. Allegedly, so was Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro. In the end, Nicholson would be the only choice that author Stephen King would approve, although King would later deride Kubrick€™s efforts, apparently unhappy at the liberties taken with the story and characters, and seventeen years later would carefully shepherd a more faithful adaptation into being, in the form of a television miniseries. It€™s true that, in 1980, Robin Williams didn€™t have the pedigree of Jack Nicholson, only really being known for Mork & Mindy by that point in his career. However, while both Williams and Nicholson brought similar edgy, nervous magnetism to their roles, Jack Nicholson is not the recovering family man that Torrance is supposed to be at the beginning of the story. In retrospect, Williams would have been a far better choice, being able to play both the reformed alcoholic attempting to write a play, and the possessed maniac that the haunted hotel has crafted by the end of the story. Nicholson already appears to be dangerously insane in the interview for the caretaker job, and in the drive down to the hotel. However, the part would prove iconic for Nicholson, and would have been considerably different in another man€™s hands.