10 Roles You Didn't Know Robin Williams Almost Played

9. Harvey Milk - Milk

An Oscar-winning role for the remarkable Sean Penn in 2008, the character of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk was one that Williams was actually attached to in 1991. A long time gestating, the project originally had Oliver Stone slated to write the screenplay, but not direct the movie. Duly delivering the script to Warner Bros. the following year, then titled €˜The Mayor Of Castro Street€™, Warner signed Gus Van Sant to direct and Robin Williams to play the part of Harvey Milk. It was a gutsy move, with heavyweight actors James Woods, Al Pacino and Daniel Day-Lewis also considered for the meaty role. In the end though, Van Sant would refuse to use the script, citing creative differences over the story€™s direction, and the screenplay would return to development hell. Given the lack of forward movement, Williams gently detached himself from the project and moved on. In the meantime, Van Sant, still pursuing making the movie using a different screenplay, eventually approached Penn for the role. Bryan Singer would attempt to kickstart using Stone€™s script for €˜The Mayor Of Castro Street€™, but momentum had gone, and with no star attached and the writers strike looming, Singer would admit defeat. There were those who didn€™t believe that Williams€™ reputation as a broader comic actor gelled with the role. Those people should have remembered his own Oscar-winning turn in Good Will Hunting a decade earlier.