You're never too famous to be given the chop.
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00:00No matter how flawlessly the pre-production and shooting of a movie goes, the filmmakers
00:04never really know how it's going to turn out until they sit down in that editing suite
00:09and start piecing their footage together.
00:11And it's here where any previously unseen problems will start to rear their heads.
00:16Very rarely, this can mean that an entire subplot or character doesn't land the way
00:20it was intended, which can lead to an actor's work being left on the cutting room floor.
00:25So with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, and here are 10 times actors were edited out
00:31of movies.
00:3210.
00:33Sienna Miller – Black Mass After appearing in Oscar hopefuls Foxcatcher
00:37and American Sniper in 2014, Sienna Miller was set to star in another potential awards
00:43candidate the following year.
00:45Black Mass charted the crime career of famous gangster Whitey Bulger, and while the biopic
00:50did try and stick closely to Bulger's real-life story where possible, one major part of his
00:55life was omitted from the final film.
00:57Miller was cast as Bulger's girlfriend, the woman who helped him evade capture for over
01:0215 years.
01:03She paid for his medications, ran errands for him, and in general was an important asset
01:08in his criminal activities.
01:10Miller had to perfect a Boston accent for the role, so she poured a lot of effort into
01:14her scenes.
01:15The director told the Boston Globe that while the actress was fantastic in the film, he
01:19chose to remove her because he felt that Bulger's later years, the scenes of which
01:23Miller featured heavily in, were less dramatic than the rest of the film.
01:28Ouch.
01:299.
01:30Kevin Spacey – All the Money in the World In light of these sexual misconduct allegations
01:34leveled against the actor in late 2017, Kevin Spacey's role in crime thriller All the
01:38Money in the World was literally edited into non-existence, and he was replaced by Christopher
01:43Plummer.
01:44This negativity meant that the film was essentially doomed.
01:47The buzz around it was now entirely negative, and its box office prospects looked shaky
01:51at best.
01:52Even its premiere at the AFI Festival was cancelled.
01:55And yet, in an incredible feat of determination, organisation, and pure filmmaking skill, director
01:59Ridley Scott managed to reshoot all of Spacey's scenes and splice them back into the rest
02:04of the film literally weeks before it was set to launch.
02:06The best bit is, you can't really tell.
02:08I mean, there's one scene with a bit of obvious green screen, but for the most part,
02:13these reshoots are not noticeable.
02:158.
02:16Terrence Stamp – Mr & Mrs Smith To say that the production of Mr & Mrs Smith
02:20was a bit of a mess is, to put it lightly, a massive understatement.
02:25Famously, the director Doug Liman was never fully sure how he wanted to conclude the film.
02:30One of his many, many, many plans was to have the titular couple defeat a pair of sinister
02:35villains before deciding against this and cutting the subplot out entirely.
02:39And this meant that a lot of great actors were also edited out of the film.
02:42These two villains were initially played by Terrence Stamp and Jacqueline Bisset, but
02:46when Liman decided that this version didn't work, he changed things up, reshooting their
02:50scenes with Keith David and Angela Bassett instead.
02:53He then decided that this didn't work either, scrapping the ending and opting to remove
02:57these characters from the film altogether.
02:59The worst thing about this was that Bassett and David weren't actually cast until the
03:04film had already wrapped principal photography, so to have your reshoots cut just totally
03:10emphasises how broken this film was.
03:127.
03:13Shailene Woodley – The Amazing Spider-Man 2
03:15If there's something that you can't fault The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for, it's the fact
03:19that the film definitely contained a lot of content, so much so that it's pretty ridiculous.
03:24It had countless subplots, like the mystery of Peter's parents, setting up the Sinister
03:28Six, Peter and Gwen's tricky romantic situation, Harry Osborn's disease, and Electro's rise
03:32to power, but it very nearly received one more, in the form of long-time Spidey love
03:37interest Mary Jane Watson.
03:39The role was played by Shailene Woodley, who, at the time, was quickly growing in stardom
03:43thanks to her roles in The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent.
03:46The actress worked on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for several days, shooting a bunch of scenes
03:50that were nowhere to be found in the final cut.
03:53Director Mark Webb told the Los Angeles Times that removing Woodley from the film was an
03:56incredibly tough call to make, but that MJ's scenes just didn't work when combined with
04:00the existing romance between Peter and Gwen.
04:03And to be honest, you have to see this as the right call, because it most likely would
04:07have cheapened the relationship between Peter and Gwen if her death was suddenly glazed
04:11over with a blossoming new romance with MJ.
04:136.
04:14Jessica Chastain – The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
04:17Jessica Chastain probably isn't too bothered about this one, considering that The Death
04:21and Life of John F. Donovan currently holds a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
04:26The movie premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, with many critics labelling
04:30it as an incoherent mess.
04:32The fact that director Xavier Dolan delayed its release so that he could extensively rework
04:37the story was an indicator that things weren't shaping up, and it was during this process
04:41that Chastain's character was lost in the mix.
04:44On Instagram, Dolan said that he felt Chastain's part needed to be cut, explaining that her
04:49subplot just didn't mesh well with the rest of the story.
04:52Chastain wasn't the only one to be chopped, either.
04:54While interviewing Bella Thorne, Vulture noted that her scenes had also been removed from
04:58the film.
04:595.
05:00Michael K. Williams – Solo A Star Wars Story
05:02When solo directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired from the project in mid-2017, the
05:08film they were originally intending to make was forced to undergo a ton of significant
05:12changes.
05:13Included in these changes was the removal of a character played by The Wire's Michael
05:16K. Williams, who was ultimately axed because of scheduling conflicts.
05:20When Ron Howard boarded the movie as its new director, he still wanted to work with Williams,
05:25but major chunks of the film had to be reshot and reworked.
05:28So, naturally, the length of the film's shooting schedule was increased significantly,
05:33which caused problems for Williams, who had other professional commitments to attend to.
05:37Namely, he was filming something else in South Africa at the time.
05:40So Howard was forced to remove Williams' role from the film, a character described
05:43as a sophisticated half-mountain lion, half-human.
05:46In the final cut, Paul Bettany plays a similar character, but not identical, who essentially
05:51had the same story function that Williams' character would have done.
05:544.
05:55Rick Mayall – Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
05:58It's borderline impossible to fit every element of a novel into its film adaptation,
06:03as the Harry Potter series found out the very hard way.
06:06Various parts of the books were cut from their movie versions, including Spew, Nearly Headless
06:11Nick's Deathday Party, and The Sphinx in the Maze, but one of the most notable omissions
06:16was Peeves the Poltergeist, who is nowhere to be seen in the entire franchise.
06:22Peeves is hardly an essential part of the Harry Potter story, but in the books, he gives
06:27Hogwarts Castle a bit more personality, and has many fun appearances throughout the series.
06:32Initially, he was supposed to appear throughout the movie series too, a recurring character
06:36played by comedian Rick Mayall, but his scenes in the first film were cut because the filmmakers
06:40weren't happy with the look of the character.
06:43Mayall revealed that he did about three weeks of filming, but he kept getting sent off set
06:46because he was making everyone else laugh.
06:48He also sent his kids to see the film without telling them he wasn't actually in it, and
06:52they came up thinking he had played Hagrid, somehow.
06:553.
06:56Lincoln K. Brown – Split
06:58After making several stinkers like After Earth, The Last Airbender, and The Happening, M.
07:03Night Shyamalan made a big comeback with 2015's The Visit and then 2017's Split.
07:10Both films are impressively laser-focused, wasting not a second of screen time, and in
07:14the latter's case, this is because the director made the wise choice to remove a character
07:18from the final cut.
07:19Shyamalan has previously talked about how he once had a three-hour cut of Split, but
07:24obviously the studio would never let him release such a version, so major changes had
07:28to be made.
07:30The director then revealed that he decided to cut a character called Professor Shaw in
07:34order to reduce that runtime and tighten up the story as a whole.
07:37The character's entire existence was a screenwriting error, according to the director.
07:41Wow, tell us how you really feel, Shyamalan.
07:44In the final cut, he wanted the story to focus more on Kevin Wendell Crumb, but since Shaw's
07:48scenes were mostly spent discussing psychology in general and not Kevin's condition specifically,
07:53the character had to go.
07:542.
07:55Sarah Jessica Parker, Lovelace Lovelace stars Amanda Seyfried as Linda Lovelace,
08:00an adult film actress who starred in the 1972 film Deep Throat, a porn film with an actual
08:06plot and some character development.
08:08Unbelievable.
08:09Shortly after production began, Demi Moore was forced to drop out of the film due to
08:12health issues, which led to the filmmakers recruiting Sarah Jessica Parker as her replacement.
08:16As it turns out, they needn't have bothered going through all that trouble because the
08:20actress is nowhere to be seen in the end product.
08:23Moore and Parker were cast as feminist icon Gloria Steinem, a huge supporter of the anti-pornography
08:28movement.
08:29The script for Lovelace originally ended in 1984, at which time Linda had crossed paths
08:34with Steinem and came to support her anti-porn beliefs.
08:37However, during editing, the directors found that it was better to end the story in 1980
08:44before Linda became involved with Steinem.
08:46Thus, Parker's scenes weren't needed.
08:481.
08:49Mickey Rourke, The Thin Red Line
08:52Several actors were cut from Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, including Lucas Haas and
08:56Bill Pullman, as well as a voiceover track recorded by Billy Bob Thornton.
09:00However, Mickey Rourke is the only one who had a notable part in the film, one that was
09:04so good that the actor once called it his best work in a 2005 interview.
09:09It's not entirely clear why Rourke was cut, but the actor believes it was for personal
09:13reasons and not to serve the story, as he stated in that same interview, and I quote,
09:17There were political reasons why I was out of the movie.
09:20That really upset me.
09:21I'd gone through a really bad time, and Terry knew about it, so he incorporated it into
09:25the character.
09:26It really worked, but just because of the temperature of me and the industry, my scenes
09:29were cut."
09:30Malick is an experimental filmmaker who makes odd, thoughtful, often provocative movies.
09:35Whether this was a personal move against Rourke or not, it's often expected for Malick to
09:39discover what the film actually is during the edit, meaning that he ends up with something
09:43completely different to what he originally planned.
09:45He's cut major stars like Rachel Weisz, Jessica Chastain, Michael Sheen, and Amanda Peet from
09:50his movies too, so at least Rourke is in good company there on the cutting room floor.