The two Oscar-winning movies Bill Murray rejected: “I would have liked to have done that”
Bill Murray has been a notoriously picky actor throughout his career. For instance, even though Ghostbusters made him a worldwide icon, he was always reticent to make a sequel. He even went AWOL from Hollywood for several years after the first movie hit, seemingly because he struggled with fame.
Indeed, for every movie Murray made, there were a host of others that he turned down, either because he wasn’t interested or because producers simply couldn’t get in touch with him. Amazingly, though, he once admitted to rejecting two Oscar-winning movies that cemented the career of a fellow A-lister – and confessed he should have said “yes” to one of them.
Casting an eye over the roles that Murray was supposedly considered for over the years is an eye-opening experience. How different would Hollywood have been if Murray had played Han Solo instead of Harrison Ford? How about if he’d squeezed himself into the bat suit in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman instead of Michael Keaton? Would children’s lives have been changed if Murray chose to voice Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story or Sully in Monsters Inc instead of Tim Allen and John Goodman?
Amusingly, while some of these parts evidently didn’t appeal to Murray, others simply passed him by because of his bizarre approach to the movie business. In 2000, Murray decided it aggravated him too much when his agents called all the time, so he simply fired everyone associated with his career and replaced them with an 800 phone number. If any filmmaker wanted to pitch him a movie, they were tasked with leaving a message and then hoping Murray checked it with any regularity. Spoiler alert: he often didn’t.
Now, most of the roles Murray didn’t take were no skin off his nose. In fact, it’s doubtful he even gave most of them more than a passing thought. However, when he spoke to Howard Stern in 2014, the laconic actor actually expressed a modicum of regret for turning down a part in a movie that won a beloved leading man his first ‘Best Actor’ Oscar.
Instead of confirming with a simple “yes” or “no” when Stern asked Murray if it was true that he turned down the Denzel Washington role in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, Murray played it cagey and elusive by saying Stern was “warm with that one”. Bizarrely, he then joked that he only watched the movie for the first time “about an hour ago”.
To the host’s shock, though, he then sincerely added, “It was on the back burner. I would have liked to have done that one.”
Next, Stern asked if Murray truly turned down the opportunity to play Forrest Gump, the iconic role that won Hanks his second Academy Award. Astonishingly, Murray gave a semi-concrete answer, saying he “did have conversations” about the movie with director Robert Zemeckis. He even claimed, “I think I had the original book and all that sort of stuff,” but suggested that he’d never gotten around to watching the film.
Ultimately, it’s interesting to wonder if Philadelphia would have been a better or worse movie with Murray opposite Hanks or if Forrest Gump would have improved with Murray taking Hanks’ place. It’s hard to deny that both are fascinating what-ifs, but we can’t help feeling both movies would have had a completely different – and not entirely appropriate – vibe if Murray had been involved.
