15 Stars Who Were Cut From Movies

Though it had been widely reported that Josh Brolin had a role in Suburbicon, director George Clooney ultimately had to leave the actor’s role out of the final cut. “We shot a couple of scenes with Josh [playing] a baseball coach that are really, really funny,” Clooney explained to EW. “But after we did our first screening, the one thing that became really clear to me was that [the scenes] let the air out of the balloon, in terms of the tension in the film. I had to write him this awful note where I just said, ‘You’re not going to believe it, but these scenes really don’t work any more.’ He felt bad, and he thought maybe something went wrong, and I said, ‘I’m sending you the scenes, so you can see, they’re actually the two funniest scenes in the movie.’” Clooney added, "He was so great in the film. I never like talking about those kind of things because it can be really unfair to an actor, except to say he was just absolutely great in the movie.”

Sterling K. Brown has seen major success on the small-screen in recent months thanks to his turns as Randall Pearson on This Is Us and as Christopher Darden on The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, but a recent big-screen gig was quite as fruitful. The Emmy-winning actor starred alongside James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Betty Buckley in M. Night Shyamalan's horror Split, but his scenes never saw the light of day. Deleted scenes revealed that Brown played Dr. Fletcher's neighbor Professor Shaw in the film.

Miller was expected to appear in Black Mass as Catherine Greig, a girlfriend of Johnny Depp's male lead, Whitey Bulger. The British actress is not included in the final cut of the thriller, however. Director Scott Cooper told The Boston Globe that Miller was axed from the story about the infamous murderer because of "narrative choices."

Early in his career, Costner nabbed a part in the star-studded dramedy The Big Chill. He played a character who died by suicide and filmed various flashback scenes for the film. When it hit theaters, however, Costner was noticeably missing from The Big Chill, featured only as a corpse with just seconds of screen time.

The same year that he starred in Blade Runner, Ford was also expected to earn another film credit in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Ford booked a cameo gig as the principal at the school Elliott (Henry Thomas) attends, but his scenes were deleted from the final version of the smash hit.

Bassett signed on to play the boss to Brad Pitt's character of John Smith. She had scenes in which she manages the assassin, who is facing off against his wife Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie). While there was little explanation, Bassett was nowhere to be seen when Mr. and Mrs. Smith arrived in theaters in 2005.

Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line almost included an appearance by Rourke. The boxer was expected to star alongside Nick Nolte, Jim Caviezel, and Sean Penn, but had all of his scenes cut by the famously fickle director. Rourke said of the exclusion in 2005, "It was some of the best work I ever did. There were political reasons why I was out of the movie. That really upset me."

Monaghan completed work on Francis Lawrence's Constantine, but never appeared in the final cut as the demonic love interest of Keanu Reeves' character John Constantine. Lawrence explained his decision in an interview after the film's release, telling About.com, "Michelle was fantastic and one of her scenes we had to cut was one of my favorite scenes we shot in this movie. We cut because it took away from Constantine's loneliness… it just affected the way the movie felt and that's why we had to cut it."

Weisz was another victim of Terrence Malick's editing process when she got cut out of 2012's To the Wonder. The British star was left out alongside Jessica Chastain, Michael Sheen, and Amanda Peet, and told Italy's La Stampa of the project in 2012, "I had the experience of working with [Malick] but I will not have the pleasure of seeing my work."

The Ring may have been even more terrifying with the inclusion of Cooper. The Oscar winner filmed footage for the horror flick as a serial rapist and murderer but his opening and closing scenes were nixed before the film's release.

Garcia filmed scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer for the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced drama Dangerous Minds. He was set to play the love interest to Pfeiffer's character of former U.S. Marine LouAnne Johnson, but didn't make it into the theatrical version of the movie as it was decided that Garcia's character was, in his words, "unnecessary."

The late Gandolfini initially had a role in the Oscar-nominated Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He was booked to play a man that Linda Schell (Sandra Bullock) meets in a support group for those who lost loved ones in 9/11, but his character was cut out due to poor reception from test audiences.

Tyler worked with Edward Norton and Drew Barrymore on Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, but was shut out of the final film. She signed on to play a small role as the love interest of Scott Dandridge (Lukas Haas), explaining to The London Times in 1999, "[Allen] wrote me a letter, which I keep on my desk and look at occasionally, saying that he was really sorry and it was nice to work with me and we would work again. But he's never asked me again."

Thurman never made it into Oliver Stone's adaptation of Don Winslow's Savages. The star was supposed to play the mother to Ophelia Sage (Blake Lively), but was axed in the editing process. Stone explained to HuffPost, "We ended up cutting characters from the book, like the mother. She was a good character -- Uma Thurman played her beautifully -- and the scenes were good, but you don’t have time, you know? We have one goal in the movie, and you go out that gate and it's like a horse race."

Rudd was originally included in the hilarious Paul Feig movie, playing a very angry man who goes on a blind date with Kristen Wiig's character of Annie Walker. Wiig touched on the decision to cut out Rudd in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, explaining, "We did screenings, and when he popped up on screen, people just went crazy. You rarely get to see that side of Paul Rudd because he’s such a nice person, you know, and in this scene he’s such an a--hole. We had so much fun the days he was there and it was so incredibly painful. Our first cut was so long. It’s the hardest thing to have to cut stuff."