Leonardo DiCaprio in Baywatch? Acting’s 10 greatest ‘what ifs’

He achieved global fame slipping beneath the wintery waves in Titanic, but had things worked out differently, Leonardo DiCaprio might have created a very different kind of splash. A new documentary about 1990s buxom beachwear bacchanalia Baywatch has revealed that the future heartthrob and Oscar winner was nearly cast as David Hasselhoff’s onscreen son, Hobie Buchannon.

DiCaprio, then 15, was one of two actors shortlisted for the part – but Hasselhoff used to veto to give the gig to the younger Jeremy Jackson. “I said, no, no, no, take the kid,” remembers Hasselhoff in Baywatch: Moment In The Sun.

Leo somehow overcame the huge setback of not playing David Hasselhoff’s adolescent offspring and has done alright for himself. Meanwhile, Jeremy Jackson was last seen on Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 5, where he was removed from the house after four days for opening fellow housemate Chloe Goodman’s dressing gown (earning a caution from Hertfordshire Police).

But while the thought of baby-face DiCaprio running in slow motion alongside Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson is weirdly appealing, he isn’t the only A-lister who very nearly ended up in the wrong movie or show. Here is a countdown of Hollywood’s most bonkers casting near-misses

10. Robert De Niro as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean

De Niro was offered the part of the roguish pirate later immortalised by Johnny Depp. But he was convinced the film would be a flop – not an unreasonable view given the disastrous performance of another pirate movie, Cutthroat Island, in 1995. With executives weighing the benefits of sending the project straight to video, he worried his reputation might be harmed.

However, when Pirates became a smash and revived Depp’s then-ailing career, De Niro was said to have regretted his decision – which is why he signed up as swashbuckling Captain Shakespeare in Matthew Vaughan’s fairytale flop Stardust.

9. OJ Simpson as The Terminator

Arnold Schwarzenegger claims Naked Gun star and (subsequent) murder suspect Simpson was the studio’s first pick for the part of a time-travelling robot assassin. “It was actually OJ Simpson that was the first-cast Terminator,” he said.“Somehow [Terminator director James Cameron] felt that he was not as believable for a killing machine. So then they hired me. That’s really what happened.”

However, Cameron has a different recollection, saying he rejected Simpson the moment an executive suggested the star athlete. “Very early on, a highly placed person at one of the two studios that funded that film had a brilliant idea and called me up and said, “Are you sitting down?” I said, “Well, no, I’m not.” He said, “Are you sitting? OJ Simpson for the Terminator!” I said, “I actually think that’s a bad idea.” It didn’t go anywhere.”

8. Daniel Day-Lewis as Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction

The mid-nineties John Travolta-naissance was sealed by his turn as a groovy hit-man in Tarantino’s 1995 classic. But Tarantino had to fight to cast the Saturday Night Fever star, then regarded as washed-up and a box office liability.

Among those jostling for the part was method acting superstar Daniel Day-Lewis. “Day-Lewis and Bruce Willis, the biggest star in Hollywood, had both gotten their hands on the script and wanted to play Vincent Vega,” recalled Tarantino’s agent Mike Simpson. To his credit, the director dug in his heels and was rewarded with the classic scene in which Travolta and Uma Thurman set the dance floor alight in Jack Rabbit Slims.

7. Al Pacino as Han Solo in Star Wars

Before asking sometime carpenter Harrison Ford if he fancied going to a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars director George Lucas seemingly offered the part of Han Solo to half the actors in Hollywood—as well as non-actors Gene Simmons of Kiss and Roger Daltrey of The Who.

He finally set his sights on Al Pacino, who was super hot coming off The Godfather Parts One and Two. Alas, Pacino couldn’t get his head around the story and passed.

“They gave me a script called Star Wars. They offered me so much money. I don’t understand it. I read it. So I said I couldn’t do it,” he said. Lucas also approached Christopher Walken, who felt Ford was the better choice. I’m very glad Harrison Ford got it,” he said. “I would have been terrible.”

6. Anthony Hopkins as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings

Hopkins won an Oscar for freaking out Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. But could he have faced down the evil Balrog as Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings? As the part went to Ian McKellen, we’ll obviously never know – though with AI, you can never rule anything out. But Jackson had certainly been keen on Hopkins after his original pick as Gandalf, Sean Connery, passed (he found the story incomprehensible).

“I don’t think you’re ever the first choice,” McKellen remembered. “I certainly wasn’t the first choice for Gandalf. Tony Hopkins turned it down.”

Twenty years on, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else as Gandalf. Jackson’s trilogy has, on the whole, aged remarkably well – and could have been a lot worse, with James Corden having auditioned for the part of Samwise Gamgee.

5. Steve Martin as Indiana Jones

Much like his friend George Lucas on his quest for the perfect Han Solo, Steven Spielberg looked high and low when casting whip-cracking pulp hero Indiana Jones. Saturday Night Live comics Steve Martin, Bill Murray and Chevvy Chase all read for the role - which was finally offered to Tom Selleck. But he had to withdraw due to his commitment to Magnum PI, clearing the way for Harrison Ford to portray another iconic character.

4. Liam Neeson as James Bond

Before finally casting Pierce Brosnan as the new 007 in 1995’s GoldenEye, Bond producer Barbara Broccoli sized up another raffish Irishman – Schindler’s List star Liam Neeson.

“Barbara [Broccoli] had called me a couple of times to ask if I was interested, and I said, ‘Yes, I would be interested”,” Neeson reminisced. “And then my lovely wife [Natasha Richardson], God rest her soul, said to me while we were shooting Nell down in the Carolinas, “Liam, I want to tell you something: If you play James Bond, we’re not getting married.”

Richardson wasn’t joking. “She gave me a James Bond ultimatum. And she meant it! Come on, there’s all those gorgeous girls in various countries getting into bed and getting out of bed. I’m sure a lot of her decision-making was based on that!”

3. John Travolta as Forrest Gump

With Pulp Fiction, Daniel Day-Lewis was keen to elbow Travolta aside for the part of Vincent Vega. Several years previously, Travolta was everyone’s first choice as the lead in Robert Zemeckis’s Forrest Gump. But he felt he didn’t have the qualities needed to bring the charmingly naive character alive on screen.

“If I didn’t do something Tom Hanks did, then I did something else that was equally interesting or fun,” he said. “But I feel good about some I gave up because other careers were created.”

2. Michelle Pfeiffer as Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs

Jodie Foster won an Oscar playing a rookie FBI agent with a traumatic past in Jonathan Demme’s creepy blockbuster. But she wouldn’t have bagged the part had Demme’s original choice not turned him down.

“With Silence of the Lambs, I was trepidatious,” said Michelle Pfeiffer. “There was such evil in that film. The thing I most regret is missing the opportunity to do another film with Jonathan [Demme]. It was that evil won in the end, that at the end of that film evil ruled out. I was uncomfortable with that ending. I didn’t want to put that out into the world.”

1. Meryl Streep as Ellen Ripley in Alien

In space, no one can hear you receive your P45. In the summer of 1978, with cameras set to roll on Ridley Scott’s unsettling space caper Alien, casting director Mary Goldberg presented the director with two potential choices as resourceful heroine, Ellen Ripley.

While what happened next is unclear, one version of events is that Scott felt Meryl Streep lacked the necessary physique and went with Sigourney Weaver. “She was too dainty and frail to play a rugged space miner,” he reportedly said.

But another account is that Streep was in a fragile state of mind following the death that March of her partner, John Cazale – and that the producers felt that expecting her to commit to a grisly sci-fi horror movie would be too much.