The two actors Steven Spielberg forced to be in his movies: “I’ve never gone on a campaign before”
Given his exalted status as the most famous and successful director in history, it sounds unlikely that Steven Spielberg would ever need to strongarm an actor into starring in one of his movies.
Surprisingly, though, the man who created the summer blockbuster with Jaws has actually forced two actors to do just that over the years, with decidedly mixed results. One of these stars was someone Spielberg earmarked for a film he was producing years before cameras rolled, and the other was a star for whom Spielberg simply wouldn’t accept no as an answer.
The story of Spielberg’s first reluctant star goes back to a table reading for his 1989 weepie, Always. In front of a cast toplined by Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter, co-star John Goodman was picked out specifically by Spielberg as the perfect man to play a certain cartoon caveman in an upcoming live-action adaptation. Amazingly, Spielberg announced this intention on the very first day of the read, declaring, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to say something before we start. I’ve found my Fred Flintstone.”
Awkwardly, though, Spielberg hadn’t thought to ask Goodman ahead of time if he had any desire to play everyone’s favourite Stone Age everyman in a big-screen version of The Flintstones, perhaps because he figured it was such a big role that no actor would turn it down. Goodman later admitted it wasn’t exactly a role he dreamed about, and it infuriated him that Spielberg had fucking “sandbagged” him in front of a group of his peers.
In the end, he felt pressured enough by Spielberg’s overtures that he actually made the goddamn movie five years later. It might have been perfectly well-intentioned on the director’s part, but Goodman still had a chip on his shoulder about it and didn’t enjoy the shoot. So much so, in fact, that when Goodman got wind that the plan was to shoot a sequel back-to-back with the first Flintstones film, he organised a sit-down with Spielberg.
According to director Brian Levant, “They wanted to do the same thing with The Flintstones that they did with Back to the Future and shoot [two sequels] back-to-back. [Goodman] made an appointment with Spielberg and said, ‘Please don’t make me do any more of these.'” He got his wish in the end, with British actor Mark Addy stepping into Fred’s shoes for the dismal sequel The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.
It goes without saying that this wasn’t the best result that could have come from forcing Goodman into something he didn’t want to do. The second time Spielberg did this, though, the outcome was a ‘Best Actor’ Academy Award and an array of glowing reviews as long as your arm. When Spielberg first approached legendary method acting giant Daniel Day-Lewis about playing US President Abraham Lincoln in the mid-2000s, the Phantom Thread star turned him down flat. This incarnation of Lincoln was a straight biopic that dealt heavily in mythologising the president who ended slavery, and Day-Lewis was intimidated by the grandeur of the project.
Spielberg eventually came back to the actor six years later after enlisting the help of his Gangs of New York co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, who told him, “You need to reconsider this. Steven really wants you for this, and he’s not willing to make the movie without you.” Of course, it also helped that this time Spielberg had a new script which specifically focused on the last four months of Lincoln’s life. This shift to a narrower focus made Day-Lewis more amenable to the idea, but he still didn’t say yes right away.
So, Spielberg did something he claimed he’d never even considered before: he kept pursuing an actor even after being turned down. “I’ve never gone on a campaign before,” Spielberg revealed. “I pretty much take ‘no’ for an answer. It’s one of the few times in my entire life where I was not willing to accept that answer.”
Eventually, his relentless pursuit paid off, and Day-Lewis agreed to make the movie. As always, he disappeared into his performance and delivered something transcendent, which Spielberg always knew he had in him. Ultimately, he believed the seed of curiosity he planted in their first meeting was integral to Day-Lewis’s turnaround. “I don’t think he ever forgot our encounter,” Spielberg said of that unsuccessful first meeting. “And I don’t think he ever forgot the challenge that was offered to him.”
