20 Actors You Didn't Know Almost Played X-Men
17. Mike Vogel Was Almost Angel
Though any actor playing Angel in X-Men: The Last Stand would have been hamstrung badly by the poor script and the messy direction, Ben Foster did reasonably well as the winged teen who turns up at the X-Mansion after his father attempts to cure him - though with little indication of how well he would do in later films. But he wasn't the first choice to play the character, and had to rely on another young upcoming star to drop out for scheduling conflicts to take the role.
Mike Vogel, who had broken out in TV show Grounded For Life and who has more recently been seen in Cloverfield and Under The Dome, was originally offered the role when Matthew Vaughn was still attached as director, but chose to back out to concentrate on starring in Poseidon. Which is a bit like climbing out of the frying pan, and into another frying pan.
At the time, Vogel spoke of the difficulty in deciding which role to take, and confirmed that the opportunity to work with Wolfgang Petersen was too big to turn down, and that ultimately, he had no regrets:
"In hindsight, Im satisfied with the decision that I made. Bretts a great director, but I looked at that movie and I thought, if youre gonna do a third installment of something, it would be rad to see a really fresh take from and indie director like they were gonna do with Matthew. I thought that was great. And then I heard rumblings that he might not be staying, and I said, That kinda sums it up for me. Because it might be interesting to be a part of something like that with his take on it, but once all that fell through, having an opportunity to work with Wolfgang, it was pretty much a no-brainer."