“It was devastating to me”: the role Reese Witherspoon missed out on
There must be nothing more devastating for an actor than campaigning really hard to get a part and losing out to someone else. No matter how happy you are for another actor to take on the role, you can’t help but feel a deep pain inside that the character will never be yours.
For Reese Witherspoon, success seems to have come with ease, winning an Oscar for her portrayal of the country singer June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, while landing many iconic roles in the likes of Legally Blonde, Into the Wild, and Big Little Lies, and even starting up a popular book club. The actor seems to have it all, but in the ‘90s, she was desperate for several parts that she was ultimately unsuccessful in getting.
Not every actor is as successful as they look on the surface, and Witherspoon was utterly crushed when she tried and failed to score the leading role in Clueless, playing the spoilt but well-meaning high-schooler Cher, which, of course, went to Alicia Silverstone, but Witherspoon landed the role of Elle Woods just a few years later, which surely scratched that same itch. There is no way that she could’ve played both characters.
Yet, the other role that devastated her, unlike anything else, more than Clueless even, was Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and while she’d already appeared in movies like The Man in the Moon and A Far Off Place, which highlighted her as a promising star, in the end, she just didn’t have what Luhrmann was looking for.
The movie wound up being a huge hit, grossing $147.6million and cementing Leonardo DiCaprio’s heartthrob status (which was only furthered by the behemoth that was Titanic the following year), and Witherspoon was gutted to have missed out, which she revealed talking to Harper’s Bazaar, “Oh my God, I wanted to do Romeo + Juliet so badly, so badly”.
The role of Juliet has been coveted by many, for she’s one of literature’s most classic characters, a symbol of both ultimate romance and tragedy, and Witherspoon had her sights set on this unique adaptation, which saw the Shakespearean play transplanted into ‘90s America, with the actors still speaking the iconic Shakespearean dialogue, but the film was bathed in grit, all guns and Hawaiian shirts.
It was Claire Danes who secured the role, although she famously clashed with DiCaprio while filming, finding him too immature, despite him being five years older than her. She was just 16 when she secured the part of Juliet, and her performance was well praised, setting her up for a career that has seen her win various prestigious awards, predominantly for her role in Homeland.
“Of course, Claire Danes was amazing, but it was devastating to me that I didn’t get it after screen tests and getting really close,” Witherspoon admitted. Clearly, it wasn’t meant to be, even if the actor really wanted the role, and instead, she appeared in the psychological thriller Fear with Mark Wahlberg, which was a pivotal film in launching her to stardom.
It might not have endured like Romeo + Juliet or Clueless, but in a few years, Witherspoon had appeared in some pretty classic movies, with Cruel Intentions, Pleasantville, Legally Blonde, Election, and American Psycho all coming within a short space of time. I’m sure she soon forgot all about Romeo + Juliet.
