20 Useless Things You Probably Never Knew About Star Wars
7. The Cast Almost Wasn't Those We Know
It's fairly common knowledge that George Lucas was hesitant to cast Harrison Ford in Star Wars and really wanted a group of relative unknowns to portray his much considered creations but this wasn't his first idea...
A young Kurt Russell actually auditioned for the role of Han Solo and didn't fit the bill according to Lucas, but he was lucky to get an audition at all given George's initial thoughts on how his cast would look.
At one stage, Lucas was intent on only using African-American actors and even considered a full cast of Japanese acting talent as his original treatments were heavily influenced by Japanese stories (Jedi are basically Samurai...).
Most confusingly of all, Lucas genuinely thought of using what he called 'little people' to make up his whole cast. Someone had clearly just finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy and may have drawn a few parallels between Luke and Frodo...