25 Things You Didn't Know About Die Hard With A Vengeance

18. Sean Connery Was McTiernan's First Choice To Play Simon

Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Sean Connery spent most of the nineties taking on parts in crime and action films, with perhaps the most famous being Michael Bay's The Rock, which released in 1996.

However, had director John McTiernan had his way, Connery would've starred in Die Hard with a Vengeance instead, with the director having shortlisted the Scottish actor as his first choice for the part of Simon Gruber. Connery supposedly passed on the role because he didn't want to take on the role of a villain, with Jeremy Irons going on to play the character instead.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.