Harrison Ford is as synonymous with the role of Deckard as he is with Indiana Jones or Han Solo - growing up, these three characters helped define our childhood conception of what it was to be cool. But just as other actors were considered for the iconic parts of Jones and Solo, so too were a number of other actors considered for the part of Deckard. The actor who appeared highly likely to take on the part in pre-production is perhaps one of the most unlikely candidates: Dustin Hoffman. A diminutive presence with little about him that screams "action hero", Hoffman would have made a very different Deckard to the one played by Ford. Hoffman was keen to appear in the film and had many meetings with the producers over a period of months, fine tuning the character and story as they went along. Ultimately, however, differences of opinion between the production team and Hoffman led him to drop out of the project, and shortly after Ridley Scott visited Harrison Ford on the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark and immediately realised he'd found his leading man. The rest is cinema history.
