The one role Kiefer Sutherland wishes he hadn’t turned down: “I wanted to go skiing”
Film history is littered with stories of now-iconic roles turned down by short-sighted actors.
Most of these come down to ill-informed management, miscalculated career decisions and scheduling conflicts, but some actors have passed up on what could have been career-shaping roles for much, much more ridiculous reasons.
Take Kiefer Sutherland, for instance, who turned down the part of Mike in My Own Private Idaho because he was going skiing. “I passed on My Own Private Idaho because I wanted to go skiing and didn’t even look at it,” he explained, “I told myself I needed to stick to my plan…and it was a really dumb plan.”
You don’t say! The role in My Own Private Idaho was famously played by River Phoenix and remains one of his most famous roles to this day, the one that droves of teenagers, who weren’t even a thought in their parents’ heads at the time of Phoenix’s untimely death, still know him for today.
At the time, the film was controversial, yet he won the Volpi Cup for ‘Best Actor’ at the 1991 Venice Film Festival, and everyone knows, the films that are controversial at the time of their release tend to become some of the most era-defining and important. After all, My Own Private Idaho is now considered a pioneering film in the genre of New Queer Cinema, and yet, Sutherland passed it up for a shoowp on the slopes without even so much as flicking through the script, as if the Alps wouldn’t still be there by the time filming had wrapped or anything.
Now, that’s not to say that Sutherland’s career went into decline due to this oversight or that he hasn’t been incredibly successful regardless. In the years following his rejection of Gus Van Sant’s film, he appeared in a spate of his most memorable projects, including Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men and sci-fi thriller Dark City, and, of course, in the early noughties, he accepted the most important role of his entire career as Agent Jack Bauer in the counterterrorism thriller series 24.
Of course, he might have appeared in these regardless, but it’s difficult to imagine the guy who played street hustler Mike Waters going on to play Bauer. There’s no telling what way the butterfly effect will take wing, and perhaps, if he’d taken the role, he’d have gone down a more artistic indie route, like that of Phoenix’s short-lived career.
Maybe if Phoenix had lost out on the role, his tragic life might have gone a lot differently, which isn’t likely, but you get the idea. The point is, at least two careers could have been much different if only Sutherland had passed up on the slopes. It’s strange to imagine the small decisions that can change a whole career.
In fact, another small change in Sutherland’s career would have really altered his trajectory. If his audition had gone differently, he might have been the one we recognise as Marty McFly, instead of Michael J Fox, so just remember folks, no matter what people say, that holiday really could be a life-changing decision.
