20 Movie Roles That Were Insanely Miscast

11. Tom Cruise - Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher Tom Cruise
Paramount Pictures

Tom Cruise is another A-lister like Tom Hanks who makes incredibly shrewd decisions about the roles he accepts and so rarely ends up being miscast.

But fans of the Jack Reacher novels were rightly up in arms the moment he was cast in the big-screen adaptation, given that the 5 foot 7 Cruise simply fell short - pardon the pun - of the description of Reacher in Lee Child's novel series as a 6 foot 5 unit.

Cruise, as brilliant as he might be in the action hero stakes, simply wasn't Reacher as written, lacking the physically imposing stature of the source, ensuring that while the film was generally well-received, many saw Cruise's casting as an albatross hanging around its neck.

After the second Jack Reacher film flopped, the IP was rebooted with an Amazon Prime Video series, Reacher, starring the far more appropriate man-mountain that is Alan Ritchson, with even author Child admitting that Ritchson was a far, far better fit than Cruise.

 
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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.