“I still don’t understand it”: the three iconic roles Sean Connery rejected in quick succession
Sean Connery has played some of the most iconic movie characters of all time, but that doesn’t mean that he accepted every interesting part that was offered to him.
Being the first actor to ever portray James Bond in a film would be the only thing he ever needed to be known for if he wanted to be remembered as a giant within Hollywood history, but he never stopped working and challenging himself, managing to stay an interesting actor for multiple generations.
Despite being a huge movie star who could sell films based purely on the basis of his involvement, Connery was also highly respected among his peers and won the Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his unforgettable performance as a stoic Irish cop in Brian De Palma’s adaptation of The Untouchables, and also got to work with Michael Caine on The Man Who Would Be King, one of John Huston’s greatest directorial masterpiece.
Connery experienced a rare resurgence late in his career, where his films Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Highlander, and The Hunt for Red October were all massive hits, setting him up for another decade of stardom. This led him to play another iconic hero when he was given the central part in Michael Bay’s action classic The Rock, but there were a few other offers that he didn’t take advantage of.
He may have played a few towering mentors before, but Connery was offered the chance to play one of the most definitive characters in all of fantasy when Peter Jackson approached him about playing Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Although it’s a role that would have earned him $450million based on 15% of the box office gross of the entire trilogy, Connery said that he had no regrets about missing out.
“I read the book,” he said, “I read the script. I saw the movie. I still don’t understand it. Ian McKellen, I believe, is marvellous in it”.
Unsurprisingly, he was equally uninterested in being another wizard in the form of Dumbledore in Harry Potter, a role that eventually went to the great Richard Harris, who passed away after completing work on the first two films, directed by Chris Columbus. He was recast with Michael Gambon when Alfonso Cuarón came in to direct the third (and best) instalment in the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and continued in the part till the finale of the franchise.
Connery’s reluctance to pick scripts that he didn’t understand may also explain why he turned down the role of Morpheus in The Matrix, which, in all fairness, was a film that many actors struggled to wrap their heads around, with Will Smith famously rejecting the role of Neo to appear in Wild Wild West the same year, a major box office flop.
Connery made a similarly tough choice when he starred as Allan Quartermain in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a critical and box office misfire that was so disastrous that it caused him to cease making films entirely.
