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One of the hardest aspects for any talent turning down a project is watching it flourish beyond their wildest expectations without them. Michelle Pfeiffer turned down the role of Clarice Starling in “The Silence of the Lambs,” and the film went on to win five Academy Awards, with one of those going to lead actress Jodie Foster. There are also nuclear-level missed opportunities like Matt Damon and James Cameron’s “Avatar,” where he not only turned down the role that Sam Worthington eventually played, but a 10 percent margin of the profits. But then you have cases like “The Matrix,” where all of the possible casting outcomes open up a multiversal rift where the film takes on a completely different stature in each of them.
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Lana and Lily Wachowski’s 1999 sci-fi mind-bender was not only a critical and box office sensation, but ultimately went on to become one of the most influential films ever made. Everyone wanted a taste of “The Matrix” phenomenon after Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishburne made history in their respective roles. According to “Matrix” producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the first person in line to ride the Neo wave was Brad Pitt. When he dropped out, the next heartthrob in mind was Leonardo DiCaprio, who ultimately passed having felt exhausted from working on the VFX-heavy “Titanic” (via The Wrap).
Will Smith is perhaps the most infamous name of the bunch, as he was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet at the time. He recognizes in hindsight that the Wachowskis were geniuses and that Reeves was the best actor for the part, but felt the pitch meeting didn’t properly convey the premise in a manner that intrigued him (via YouTube). The search for a lead was getting so strained that Sandra Bullock was not only considered for Neo, but Trinity as well.
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After all that trouble, it’s clear that no one could have played the composed stillness of Neo like Reeves did. It essentially launched the second wave of his career. It may seem impossible to imagine anyone besides Fishburne as Morpheus, Neo’s mentor figure amid his awakening in the “world of the real,” but there was once a very real possibility that the part could have gone to Val Kilmer.
Val Kilmer was almost Morpheus in The Matrix
Prior to the release of “The Matrix,” Kilmer was on a roll as a bonafide movie star, having worked with filmmakers like Tony Scott (“Top Gun”), Oliver Stone (“The Doors”) and Michael Mann (“Heat”). What’s to say Kilmer couldn’t trade the black rubber suit of the Caped Crusader (“Batman Forever”) for the black leather alligator trench coat of Morpheus? He had charisma for days, and Kilmer also possessed the kind of quiet intensity that would have made him a natural candidate for a character who has to carefully illustrate the gravity of deconstructing a false reality. Of all the Neo castings, it was Smith who Kilmer would have been opposite against. The “what if” simply wasn’t to be, however, as Fishburne won the role and marked a new milestone in his career.
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Akin to Neo’s casting process, Morpheus had some other high caliber talent in contention, such as Michael Douglas and, even more confoundingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The long and arduous “will they, won’t they” casting process came about from Warner Bros. wanting some A-list talent to help offset such an ambitious project. “The bigger the star, the more likely the studio was to say yes,” Di Bonaventura explained.
Even though Kilmer passed on playing the pilot of the Nebuchadnezzar, he would get the opportunity the following year to star in another sci-fi thriller with “Matrix” star Carrie-Anne Moss in the form of “Red Planet.”
“The Matrix” is currently streaming on Max. Solana Token Creator
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