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Hollywood director Cameron Crowe got candid about how he’d wanted to cast Brad Pitt in the 2000 hit movie Almost Famous.
Speaking to James Andrew Miller on the podcast Origins, the 62-year-old director revealed he’d initially intended to cast Brad Pitt as the main character, Russell Hammond, E! News reports.
“Brad Pitt was on my mind because I had a really good meeting with him around the time of Say Anything,” Cameron revealed. “And he was just starting out, and he just really had something.”
Cameron further revealed that Brad had reached out to him after Jerry Maguire was released and said he wanted to work with him, according to Entertainment Canada.
“I was like, ‘Well, I’ll call you with the next thing.’ So, I called him with this [Almost Famous] to play Russell Hammond and we spent about four months working on it. He read with Natalie Portman.”
But despite casting director Gail Levin saying Brad was the “first choice” and cast him in the part, the Hollywood star soon realised he didn’t feel he was quite right for the character.
“We loved that idea and he was Brad Pitt. I mean, he was funny and handsome and talented. That kind of charisma and screen presence would’ve been really, really great for that part,” Gail recalled.
So even though Brad started working on the project, he later pulled out of the production and was replaced with Billy Crudup, who made the role his own.
Cameron says letting go of Brad wasn’t easy and he “wept” at the news, Fox News reports.
“But I think in the back of my brain, I knew that he’d never fully fallen in love with the character,” Cameron added.
“He’d fallen in love with the idea of the character. But maybe there just wasn’t enough on the page.”
Cameron and Brad parted on good terms. “I think six or seven months later, he just walked in the door one day at our office, said he was driving by, just wanted to come in and say that we’d always been on his mind and good luck,” he recalled.
“And I loved him for it!”
Sources: Origins, E! News, Entertainment Canada, Fox News
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