Ed Harris and a Stanley Kubrick regret: “It was foolish”
Any actor’s career is the sum total of their choices. Building a lasting career in Hollywood is exceedingly difficult, not least because picking the correct role or movie every single time is almost an impossibility. Every star will get it wrong occasionally, and the best they can hope for is that they pick more good projects than bad ones – or that they at least make every decision with conviction. One star who turned down an iconic part in an equally iconic Stanley Kubrick movie couldn’t back up his choice with any true reasoning, though, and admitted it was one of his biggest career regrets.
Few cinematic presences are as reliable as Ed Harris. From The Rock to Apollo 13, A History of Violence to The Truman Show, and The Hours to Top Gun: Maverick, the steely-eyed star has always been great in an unshowy, fiercely believable way. He’s been part of countless great movies over the years and has a habit of making lesser movies better simply by being there. However, he once admitted that there should be another stone-cold classic on his CV – but he made the boneheaded decision to turn it down, and couldn’t explain why.
Harris first began making a name for himself in Hollywood in the early ’80s with appearances in movies like Knightriders and Creepshow, before he landed his breakout part as real-life astronaut John Glenn in Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff. That film tanked at the box office, but was nominated for eight Academy Awards, helping it perform exceptionally well on home video. Over the next four years, Harris lent his stoic, simmering talents to a host of films, including Under Fire, Swing Shift, Sweet Dreams, and Walker, although the only bona fide hit he enjoyed was 1984’s Places in the Heart.
So, when Harris received a fateful phone call from the greatest director in Hollywood history in 1986 asking him if he wanted to be part of his new movie, you’d have thought the young star would jump at the chance. Instead, though, he said, “No, thanks” – and later wondered how he’d allowed himself to be such an idiot.
“Stanley Kubrick called me up one day and asked me to play the sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, and I said no,” Harris confessed to The Los Angeles Times in 2018. “That always made me kind of go, ‘What were you thinking about?'” With a slow shake of his head and a wry, knowing smile, he added, “It might have been that I had a few too many beers that night. It was foolish.”
Harris admitted that R Lee Ermey, who so memorably portrayed the bellowing drill instructor in Kubrick’s seminal Vietnam boot camp classic, did a much better job than he ever could have. Still, he could never quite understand how he let that opportunity slip through his fingers, and it was still on his mind in 2025.
At the Dublin Film Festival, Harris was asked about his choices over the years and again mentioned Full Metal Jacket, but this time he elaborated on that phone call with Kubrick. Hilariously, he revealed that the enigmatic director couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, exclaiming, “You’re kidding me. You don’t want to play this role?” when he turned the part down.
“I don’t even remember why,” the Abyss star chuckled ruefully. “I think that had to do with my family. I might’ve been drunk at the time and didn’t really want to think about it.” With hindsight, he wondered if his younger self was worried the drill instructor character would be too one-dimensional, but he still believes it was an almighty blunder to disappoint Kubrick.
“That’s kind of unusual, not to want to work with Mr Kubrick,” he smiled. “I don’t know who I thought I was.”
