The Liam Neeson movie Julia Roberts turned down: “Better if she was taken out of consideration”
In 1990, Liam Neeson starred in his most prominent leading role up to that point. The movie was a big-budget pulp action-adventure directed by a cult horror director leaping into blockbuster territory, and the plan was to unite Neeson on-screen with Julia Roberts, then poised to break out as an absolute superstar in Pretty Woman. Unfortunately, though, Roberts took herself out of running for the part, and it wasn’t because she disliked the movie. Instead, the reason was all-too-personal.
The tale of Sam Raimi’s journey to bring a dark new superhero tale to the screen began in the late 1980s when he pushed Universal Pictures to let him direct an adaptation of the classic pulp character, The Shadow. Unfortunately, the studio had already hired Robert Zemeckis of Back to the Future to develop the project. Still, Raimi – a devoted comic book geek who would later direct three Spider-Man movies to enormous success and acclaim – wouldn’t be completely deterred.
In 2020, producer Robert Tapert told The Hollywood Reporter that Raimi took the disappointment of being denied The Shadow and resolved, “I am going to create my own superhero and take aspects of other superheroes and incorporate them into the character of Darkman.” Indeed, he had already written a short story about ‘Darkman,’ a character who could alter his appearance to look like anyone he wished. As he developed the story into a 40-page scrip treatment, Darkman became a terrifying avenger whose face was scarred by villains, and thus he became a master of disguise.
Ultimately, Darkman became a vehicle for Raimi to throw a lot of influences together: The Shadow, Batman, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera, and the seminal Universal monster movies of the 1930s and ’40s. When he sent the screenplay to Neeson, fresh off starring in the Dirty Harry sequel The Dead Pool and the action movie Next of Kin, the star admitted, “The script appealed to the little boy in me because I know it would have been something I would have loved to have seen on a Saturday matinee growing up in Ireland, and it was a big fat juicy lead in a movie.”
When it came time to cast the female lead, an obvious candidate stood out to everyone involved: Roberts. You see, in addition to her status as an on-the-cusp superstar, she had also dated Neeson for two years after they met on the set of 1988’s Satisfaction. These days, a relationship between a 35-year-old star and a 19-year-old ingenue may sound questionable, but at the time, few saw anything wrong with it. In fact, the two stars reportedly moved in together only two weeks after meeting.
“The studio was pushing for Julia for a number of reasons,” Tapert admitted. The problem, though, was that by the time she auditioned for Darkman alongside Neeson, they had recently broken up, and the wounds were pretty fresh. Casting director Nancy Nayor revealed, “When they read the audition scene together, both actors had tears in their eyes. It was so intimate. Right after, her agent called and said she felt it might be better if she was taken out of consideration. I think she felt it would just be too awkward for them to work together again so soon under the circumstances.”
Luckily, even though Raimi lost out on Roberts for his movie, a replacement was right under his nose. In fact, she was living with him. “At the time, I had been sharing a house in Los Angeles with Sam, and Joel and Ethan Coen,” Frances McDormand revealed. The Coens and Raimi were almost inseparable in those days, you see, and McDormand was married to Joel. So, it only made sense to bring her in for an audition, and when she and Neeson hit if off, Raimi realised he’d found his female lead after all.
