15 Actors Who Foolishly Turned Down Career-Making TV Roles

7. Michael Keaton Was Almost Jack Shephard - Lost

Picturing Michael Keaton as heartthrob surgeon Dr. Jack Shephard on Lost just feels plain wrong, and luckily, Keaton ended up turning down the role when producer J. J. Abrams informed him that his character would be turned into the shows' protagonist instead of an expendable guest slated to be killed off in the first episode. Keaton didn't want to commit to a full time role and the rest is history. In Keaton's defense, he would be playing the role of a man stranded in the middle of nowhere at 53 years-old, which is a lot less convincing than someone like Fox who was 38 at the time the show began - even if he was Batman. Nonetheless, the role would have made him plenty of cash and forced him back into the spotlight since his gradual fall beginning with 1998's abysmal Jack Frost. He would also have been able to fix his profile after years of perceived abuse, and we could still be seeing regular work from Keaton, rather than wondering how wide a release the admittedly excellent looking Birdman will actually get. In Fox' case, his career appears to be in purgatory at the moment, as he hasn't acted in anything really worth mentioning since the finale of Lost in 2010 - but he can always rely on the fact that casting directors will always easily be able to remember him as the lead in that massive, mend-bending show that pretty much won TV for more than half a decade.