The Oscar-nominated role Cary Grant chickened out of: “He was too careful, too fearful”
There are some opportunities that we turn down and later kick ourselves over, with many cases within the Hollywood world in which actors have rejected roles that later became huge successes, missing out on fame and earning millions to add to their name. While a role might eventually go to someone who highly deserves it, there is no way that the likes of Val Kilmer and Al Pacino wouldn’t have been kicking themselves for saying no to Dirty Dancing and Die Hard, respectively, perhaps haunting them for the rest of their careers.
In an industry that revolves around luck and fate, the number of missed connections and opportunities is unsurprising, with most actors going up for the same roles and becoming used to the feeling of seeing something they auditioned for going to someone else. It might be a particularly challenging role that goes to someone with more experience, or to an actor who has worked with the director before, but there was one almost role for Cary Grant that he turned down because he was too intimidated by it.
Grant is no stranger to challenges, with his performance in the 1938 film Bringing Up Baby proving him as a master of dry comedy from the get-go through his work with Katharine Hepburn and, of course, a leopard. From that project onwards, he continued this same dauntless streak, starring in films like North by Northwest, Charade and His Girl Friday, becoming a frequent collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks.
However, while he always had a calm and collected approach, Grant’s fear got the better of him when George Cukor asked him to star in his 1954 film A Star is Born, in which Judy Garland had the lead role. Cukor discussed how Grant had seemed perfect for the role after his audition, saying, “Cary, you have no idea how good you are in this part. You should play this; it will give your career a whole new dimension. You’ll be wonderful in it.”
But the actor was unconvinced, asking for a few days to think about it and question whether he was up for the job. Warner Bros were incredibly keen to have him on board, too, even adhering to all his financial requests in order to make the offer even more enticing. But it was still an offer that Grant found easy to refuse, eventually turning it down.
Cukor expressed his disappointment at his decision, saying, “He was too careful, too fearful to take a chance. He might have felt he didn’t have the training or something, but whatever it was, this robbed him of the position he really wanted and that I know he was capable of arriving at. Had he played in A Star Is Born, he would have had the Academy Award. Years later, they gave him an honorary one, but it wasn’t the same thing.”
The director was convinced that this would have been a hit for Grant, but something about the project seemed far too adventurous and challenging to the actor, perhaps afraid that such a dramatic role would be too different for him and he wouldn’t do the story justice. The film became a huge success, and there is no doubt that Grant later reflected on it and wondered what could’ve been.
