"I’ll Shoot Your Dog If You Don’t Give Me This Role" – Nine Actors That Begged And Fought For Their Roles, And Eight That Took Some Serious Convincing

“I basically sent an email a day for about a month just threatening any other actors that might be up for the role."

Casting actors in movies, or landing the role of a lifetime, is rarely that simple. A lot of the time, the directors, producers, or actors themselves need a fair bit of convincing.

Paramount Pictures

So, here are nine actors who had to convince directors they were right for the role, and eight that had to be persuaded to join a project:

1. Chris Evans – Knives Out

Netflix

You'd have thought Chris Evans would not be short of acting opportunities after his rocket to stardom. But after his long stint in the MCU, he was eager to jump into new and different opportunities – so eager that he practically begged director Rian Johnson to give him the role of Ransom in Knives Out. Here's what Chris had to say about persuading Rian to cast him: 

“I don’t even think I let him speak. I think I just kind of was babbling the entire time about what I wanted to do with the role and what I thought I could bring and 'please cast me', basically. It was just kind of me just pitching him, just begging.”

2. Jennifer Lawrence: Hunger Games

Lionsgate

The role of Katniss Everdeen may always be associated with Jennifer, but she was initially not keen on the prospect of playing a major franchise part. She remembered the feeling of having this monumental decision to make: 

"It's really rare that saying yes to something will completely change your life. I was happy with my life and I didn't know if I wanted it to change..." 

But it was a conversation with her mother that convinced her to accept the part, as she recalled: 

"I took three days to decide, and each day was a different answer. I finally talked to my mum. I'd only really done indie films before that, and she said: 'Every time people ask you why you don't do studio movies, you always say that it's because you don't care about the size of the movie, you care about the story and the character. But you're a hypocrite...'"

3. Sadie Sink – Stranger Things

Netflix

It's safe to say that Sadie's breakout role was her part as Max in Stranger Things, and since then she's gone on to star in The Whale – but she had to do some serious persuading to land the Stranger Things role. 

Apparently, the casting directors were hesitant about her being too old (she was 14 at the time), but she wanted the role so much that she did everything it took to land it:

"I just begged and pleaded with them to give me more material so I could show them something fresh.”

Thankfully, the extra material worked, and she got the part!

4. Viggo Mortensen – The Lord of the Rings

New Line Cinema

Another iconic role that was almost turned down was Viggo's part as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. While few people could picture the character being played by anyone else, it was initially given to  Stuart Townsend who had the part as late as two weeks into production before they let him go.

But the sudden change led the production team to reach out to Viggo and ask him to drop everything and come to New Zealand the very next day and start shooting.

Viggo remembered getting the call, which was obviously a huge decision to make on such short notice. He asked on the phone to think about it for a minute, and the producers replied, "Well, not for very long. You have until this afternoon."

Having not read the books, and with a young family, getting asked to fly across the world and be away for so long the very next day meant that Viggo was leaning towards declining the role. Luckily, his son Henry was in the room when he got the call, and asked him what it was about. 

Upon finding out the part was for The Lord of the Rings, which Henry loved, he encouraged Viggo to take it. So, Viggo accepted it without having even met the director or read the books and left the next day!

5. Robert Pattinson – Good Times

A24

After Robert's major role in the Twilight series, it would be surprising that he'd be having to ask for work options – and surprised was exactly the reaction of the Safdie brothers when they received his email asking for a part. 

Robert, inspired solely by a still of the movie's star Arielle Holmes’s pink-lit face, emailed the brothers begging them to be in their next movie. If it were not for that email, we'd have not gotten the wildness of Good Times, at least as we saw it!

6. Tom Cruise – Top Gun

Paramount Pictures

A young Tom Cruise wasn't all that sure about accepting the part in Top Gun, so the producers arranged for him to fly with the Blue Angels at a Naval Air Facility in California. According to Jerry Bruckheimer, the pilots saw a ponytailed Tom riding his motorbike up there and thought, "we’re going to give this hippie a ride."

Jerry continued: "They took him up on an F-14 and flipped him and did all kinds of stunts to turn him around and make sure he never got back in a cockpit."

However, these stunts, instead of frightening Tom, essentially convinced him to take the role: "He landed and he walked over to a phone booth and called me up and said, 'Jerry. I’m making the movie. I love it.'"

7. William H. Macy – Fargo

Gramercy Pictures

William auditioned for the role of Jerry in the Coen Brother's film Fargo, and was determined to get the part. When he discovered that they were holding further auditions in New York though, he had to do something about it. 

He decided to travel to the casting call and give them a bit of a scare:

“I was making a joke — and luckily it landed — but I said, ‘I’m afraid you’re going to screw up your movie and cast someone else in this role, And they went, ‘Ha ha ha,’ and I said, ‘No, seriously, I’ll shoot your dog if you don’t give me this role.’ And I think Ethan [Coen] had just gotten a dog.'”

Well, it worked! Although I wouldn't advise threatening to shoot their pet when trying to land a job TBH. 

8. Winona Ryder – Stranger Things

Netflix

The Duffer brothers had to pull out all the stops to convince Winona to join the Stranger Things team. The process included sending her a pitch that made reference to E.T, Jaws, and various other movies that helped inspire the show. 

They also went to the extent of making a whole fake trailer for the show that they sent to her, to give her a feel of what the show would look like. And after sending her the script, they sat down with her for a four-and-a-half-hour meeting, after which she eventually agreed to the project. 

9. Henry Cavill – The Witcher

Netflix

Henry was such a big fan of the books and loved the character of Geralt that he felt destined to play him. So much so that he pestered his agent to organise a meeting with showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich before the series had even been greenlit. 

The pestering didn't stop there – in fact, Henry was so determined to be cast as Geralt that Hissrich admitted she found him "annoying." After auditioning another 206 actors – Henry was finally given the role (which is now no longer his). 

10. Peter Dinklage – Game of Thrones

HBO

When Peter Dinklage was approached to play Tyrion in Game of Thrones, he had one major problem – and that was the genre:

"I had one hesitation, because of the fantasy genre, I told him [David Benioff] I didn't want a really long beard and pointy shoes." 

He explained his concerns, saying, "Dwarves in these genres always have this look. My guard was up. Not even my guard — my metal fence, my barbed wire was up. Even Lord of the Rings had dwarf-tossing jokes in it."

So, it was up to the creators to convince Peter that this character wasn't like that at all, and was far more complex: "They told me about his complexity, the fact that he wasn't a hero or a villain, that he was a womanizer and a drinker, and they painted a flawed and beautiful portrait of him, so I signed on."

11. Channing Tatum – The Hateful Eight

The Weinstein Company

When Channing Tatum was up for a role in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, he was clearly quite nervous about landing the part. Channing resorted to bombarding the director with emails, trying to figure out who else was up to the role: 

“I basically sent about an email a day for about a month just threatening any other actors that might be up for the role. I was just praying that no one really tough was up for the role.”

12. Leonardo DiCaprio – Titanic

20th Century Fox

Looking back now, it's hard to imagine anyone else in the role of Jack in James Cameron's Titanic, but the director had to do a fair amount of convincing in order to get Leo to accept the part. 

The reason that the actor was hesitant to accept the role is that he didn't think it was challenging enough, as James Cameron recalled: 

"He didn't want to do a leading man. I had to really twist his arm to be in the movie. He didn't want to do it. He thought it was boring."

The director said that Leo only accepted the part after a lot of work to convince him that the role was actually a challenging one, but he wasn't the only person he had to convince. According to Cameron, the studio also wasn't keen on casting him, so he had to put the work into convincing them too. 

Thankfully, he, and Kate – who also wanted Leonardo to play Jack – worked their magic!

13. Sally Field – Lincoln

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Sally was in line to play Mary, the first lady to President Lincoln when Liam Neeson, who was set to play Lincoln, left the project. When Daniel Day-Lewis got the role, director Steven Spielberg became concerned that Sally wasn't the right fit with Daniel – due largely to their age difference and the respected ages of Lincoln and Mary. 

Sally wasn't going to give up though, so she met with Steven for coffee to plead her case:

"Steven had a legitimate reason for feeling as he did. I understand that. But I also knew there was no other Mary to be had. So I had to step up to the plate. I said, 'Test me.'"

And test her they did, but she got a call from Steven saying that she'd not gotten the part which left her devastated. Thankfully though, after some thought, Steven sent the tape to Daniel, and it was he who decided she was perfect for the role. 

14. Chris Evans – Captain America: The First Avenger

Paramount Pictures

Chris' role in the MCU made him a monumental star, and one of the most recognisable faces in the industry – but it was this rise to stardom that made him hesitant to take the part in the first place. His mother, Lisa, who eventually convinced him to accept, remembered why he initially turned the part down: 

“His biggest fear was losing his anonymity. He said, ‘I have a career now where I can do work I really like. I can walk my dog. Nobody bothers me. Nobody wants to talk to me. I can go wherever I want. And the idea of losing that is terrifying to me.’”

Realising that this was the role of a lifetime, and something that would change his status in the industry for the better, she advised him to take the part: 

"I said to him: ‘Look, you want to do acting work for the rest of your life? If you do this part, you will have the opportunity. You’ll never have to worry about paying the rent. If you take the part, you just have to decide, It’s not going to affect my life negatively—it will enable it.’”

Mothers know best, I guess!

15. Meryl Streep – Sophie's Choice

Universal Pictures

When Meryl met with the director, he said that he was considering giving her a main role in the picture. She'd read the book long ago but wanted to read the script to get a look at the role and asked the director to see it. However, the director told her that, even though he was prepared to give her a big part, he wasn't allowed to show her the script. – "He drove me crazy and I drove him crazy and we parted company."

It was a year later that Meryl got her hands on the script, via some secretaries who weren't supposed to hand out copies, and after reading it she thought: "'You've just sent your career down the tubes' as it was the best part I'd read in years and also a wonderful screenplay."

Upon calling up the director to ask for a part, she found out that he'd chosen another actor for the role, someone who Meryl thought to be too "young" and "beautiful" to play it. 

"Thus began my campaign to change his mind and I sat and he was very nice. He met me for an hour and a half and I got one thing out of him as he said he'd see me again that week."

She eventually convinced him, and lucky she did!

16. Penn Badgley – You

Netflix

Penn revealed that there was one major thing standing in his way of accepting the role, which was the sex scenes – in fact, they almost led to him turning it down: 

"There’s almost nothing I could say with more consecration. That aspect of Hollywood has always been very disturbing to me — and that aspect of the job, that mercurial boundary — has always been something that I actually don’t want to play with at all."

There was one person who Penn would listen to regarding the scenes, and whether to take the role or not, and that was his wife, Domino Kirke. Domino encouraged him to take the role, and as Penn said, he "wasn’t going to listen to anyone more than her."

17. Carrey Mulligan – Shame

Searchlight Pictures

When Carrey initially read the script for Steve McQueens Sex Addiction drama, she thought there was no way that she would get the role of Silly Sullivan: “I thought, ‘They’ll never let me play that’. I’ve been in An Education and Never Let Me Go. She’s so far removed from anything I’ve done.” 

But she went to meet Steve, and it was at the meeting that she decided she had to fight for this part, despite the director's haste to leave the meeting: 

“Steve kept trying to leave the meeting and I sat him back on his chair and said, ‘What do I need to do to get this job?’ I told him I felt a passionate desire to play the part.”

What other major roles took some major convincing? Let us know in the comments below!