Five famous actors who refused to star in ‘Platoon’: “No one’s gonna see this movie!”
It’s easy to look back and wonder why so many actors turned down the chance to play a pivotal role in Oliver Stone’s Platoon, given that it was a critical, commercial, and awards season success that endures as one of American cinema’s greatest-ever war movies.
However, with The Deer Hunter and Coming Home being exceptions, Hollywood wasn’t especially enamoured with Vietnam-era stories at the time. The conflict, which was hugely unpopular with great swathes of the public, continued to leave a bad taste in the cultural mouth, making filmmakers, studios, and performers wary of tackling the subject.
Of course, the writer and director wasn’t only a Vietnam veteran himself, but he was already an Academy Award-winning screenwriter who penned Alan Parker’s Midnight Express, and had shown plenty of promise behind the camera with his sophomore feature, Salvador. That instantly lent Platoon more gravitas and authenticity than most films of its ilk, but finding a cast remained difficult.
Offers were made to countless names, and a surprising number of them rejected him outright. Five of them went on to become industry heavyweights in their own right, and agreeing to board Platoon may well have changed the trajectory of their careers forever.
Five famous actors who turned down Platoon:
James Woods
Having played the lead role in Stone’s Salvador, and garnered an Oscar nomination in the ‘Best Actor’ category for his efforts, it was only natural that the filmmaker would be keen to reunite with James Woods for his next effort.
However, their last collaboration was so arduous that Woods had no interest whatsoever in re-teaming with Stone, especially when heat and humidity would once again be a huge part of the production.
He was offered Tom Berenger’s Oscar-nominated part as staff sergeant Barnes, but as he explained, it only took one sentence for him to make his feelings clear to Stone: “My words to Oliver were, ‘I’m not going into another fucking jungle with you!'”
Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle MacLachlan wasn’t quite an unknown when his interest was gauged in Platoon, but his big-screen debut was hardly one for the history books when David Lynch disowned his disastrous adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune.
Still, he’d shown enough promise to be offered the leading role of Chris Taylor, but he wasn’t the biggest fan of the script. “I had some thoughts about it, some things that I wasn’t certain about,” he said. “Some of the culmination of the character, where he ends up.”
MacLachlan “didn’t necessarily think that was the direction that he should have gone in,” so he said no. Did he regret it? Absolutely not, because he returned to Lynchian cinema and headlined Blue Velvet instead.
Kevin Costner
Another soon-to-be superstar who hadn’t quite reached mainstream status when Platoon went in front of the cameras, Kevin Costner had recently wrapped Fandango and Silverado, two films that sent him on his way to the top, when Stone came calling.
The future two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker didn’t have any issues with the script or with Stone, rejecting Platoon for personal reasons. His brother had served in Vietnam, and Costner wasn’t comfortable about being part of a movie that potentially showed the negative after-effects of combat.
With the benefit of hindsight, though, he’s since called it the one role he’s always regretted turning down.
Denzel Washington
In a two-for-one special, Denzel Washington didn’t only knock back Platoon, but another war movie made by an influential auteur that was released in the 1980s to much critical adulation.
He could have been a part of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, but since the filmmaker refused to let anyone see the script until they’d committed to the project, he declined. When Platoon landed on his desk, there was only one part he wanted to play.
Washington had his sights set on Willem Dafoe’s Sergeant Elias, and when it became clear that he wasn’t going to be cast in the role, he opted to wash his hands of Platoon altogether.
Emilio Estevez
Obviously, Charlie Sheen played the lead in Platoon, which led to a wonderfully meta moment opposite his father, Martin, in Hot Shots! Part Deux when they riffed on their respective wartime classics and praised each other’s performances in Wall Street.
He wasn’t the first member of the Sheen/Estevez clan to speak to Stone about Chris Taylor, though, with Emilio revealing that he’d turned it down by the time the script made its way to his brother. Ironically, he didn’t think it was a viable film, and the shadow of his old man’s Apocalypse Now performance was another deciding factor.
“I remember saying, ‘Oliver, no one’s gonna see this movie! It’s too tough, too graphic!” he told Alex Simon. “Apocalypse was still fresh in everyone’s mind at that point, so I thought, the last thing I should do if I wanted my own identity, is make another Vietnam film!” Clearly, Charlie disagreed.
