The classic Martin Scorsese movie that nearly starred Tom Cruise and Madonna: “Can you imagine?”
One of Martin Scorsese’s many strengths as a filmmaker is his innate ability to sniff out the pitch-perfect casting choice for a key role, and nobody needs to look any further than his habit of helming performances that have either been nominated for or won Academy Awards to see why.
Ellen Burstyn won ‘Best Actress’ for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Diane Ladd was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actress’. Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster were shortlisted for Taxi Driver, De Niro scooped ‘Best Actor’ for Raging Bull, while Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty were in the running for supporting gongs in the seminal boxing biopic.
Paul Newman finally landed the big one under Scorsese’s direction in The Color of Money, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actress’, with Pesci going one better than Raging Bull on Goodfellas when he claimed the supporting actor statue for a film that also secured a nod for Lorraine Bracco.
De Niro gained further Scorsese-helmed nominations in Cape Fear and Killers of the Flower Moon, Leonardo DiCaprio was in the mix for The Aviator and The Wolf of Wall Street, Cate Blanchett won ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for the Howard Hughes biopic, and that’s barely even the tip of the iceberg.
Hell, Scorsese even managed to get Mark Wahlberg an Oscar nomination, and that’s without mentioning Juliette Lewis, Winona Ryder, Sharon Stone, Daniel Day-Lewis, Alan Alda, Jonah Hill, or Lily Gladstone. Needless to say, the legend knows how to concoct the perfect marriage of performer and part, and he dodged a bullet by deciding that Tom Cruise and Madonna were not the way to go.
For many, Goodfellas is Scorsese’s magnum opus, and arguably, the single most important relationship in the narrative is the one between Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill and Bracco’s Karen. The gangster life might seduce him, but his eventual wife provides the emotional anchor he always returns to. Both actors are phenomenal in the film, and it’s impossible to imagine them being played by anyone else.
And yet, producer Irwin Winkler admitted to GQ that “Tom Cruise was discussed” to play Henry, while executive producer Barabra De Fina confirmed that “Madonna seemed to be in the mix” for Karen. Scorsese met her after she’d performed in a play, acknowledging that “there was definitely somebody somewhere wanting to cast her.”
“Can you imagine? Tom Cruise and Madonna?” De Fina asked rhetorically. “But Marty can get a performance out of almost anyone.” That might be true, but it goes without saying that Goodfellas would have been a completely different – and most likely inferior – flick if those two were embodying the Hills at the expense of Liotta and Bracco.
