The iconic 1961 role Shirley MacLaine turned down: “I couldn’t stand the idea”
When Shirley MacLaine was young, she was set on being a ballet dancer, dedicating herself to the art from a young age. However, as she got taller, she started to realise that she perhaps didn’t have the stereotypical dancer’s frame, and her interest in the medium waned, but not the desire to perform.
She wanted to continue appearing on stage, and soon, she moved towards acting, something that her younger brother, Warren Beatty, was also keen on, where it seemed like stardom was instilled in her from the very beginning, with her first name inspired by the most popular child star of the time, Shirley Temple, but MacLaine wasn’t to become a child star, though.
Rather, she made her film debut as an adult in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, and within a few years, she was swiftly rising up the ranks of Hollywood, finding particular acclaim in the 1958 film Some Came Running, which earned MacLaine her first Oscar nomination, but just two years later, she was nominated again, this time for her role in the romantic comedy classic The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder.
Now she was a major star, so of course she started to be offered huge roles, and one of these was for a major 1961 movie that has gone down in history as one of the most iconic films of all time, partly due to its stylish charms, but MacLaine wasn’t remotely interested.
It’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role, but MacLaine was initially offered the part of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which, of course, went to Audrey Hepburn, a role the star is best known for; just the image of her in a black dress, her hair piled on top of her head, and gloves stretching up her arms, is instantly recognisable.
The part was also offered to Marilyn Monroe, who writer Truman Capote saw as a much more screen-accurate interpretation of Holly rather than the more gamine Hepburn, but she also turned it down. MacLaine surely could’ve done a great job of the role, yet she didn’t believe it to be anything more than a movie about fashion, and she just didn’t care. George Axelrod had adapted the script from Capote’s novella, but MacLaine didn’t think it was very good, so she turned down the offer with few regrets.
In her book The Wall of Life: Pictures and Stories from This Marvellous Lifetime, she revealed that she “didn’t think it was a very good script,” explaining, “I didn’t want to have to worry about my weight to be able to wear all those outfits and do all those fittings”. Even now, decades on, she is hardly bothered by the fact that she turned down the lead in a Hollywood classic as adored as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, although she admits that, if she could turn back time, maybe she would’ve had more patience to sit through the fittings.
The actor continued, “Well, listen, I’m a well-known disliker of fittings. I don’t like fittings, and I knew that would take a lot of fittings. I wasn’t sure about the script because it was so much about how I would look, therefore, about how many fittings. That’s really it. I couldn’t stand the idea.”
So, Hepburn took on the role instead, although the pair would actually work together that same year on The Children’s Hour. As for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, all these years later, MacLaine has still never seen it.
