After an actor gets cast in a movie, they have so much to look forward to — being on set, attending the premiere, and maybe even appearing in a sequel.
However, after filming, in the sequel announcement, or even during the premiere, some actors discover that the role they filmed isn't the character who made it onscreen.
Here are 13 actors whose roles were cut, dramatically reduced, or recast without their knowledge:
1. Kimberly J. Brown played Marnie Piper in Halloweentown, Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge, and Halloweentown High.
However, in Return to Halloweentown, Sara Paxton played Marnie.
Despite rumors that Kimberly didn't return because of scheduling conflicts, she revealed in a 2013 YouTube video that she was "not really sure" why she was recast.
Sara didn't know why the role was being recast either. She told Hollywood.com, "I just know they called me and said, ‘Do you want to play Marnie?’ and I said, ‘Yeah!’"
2. Terry Crews was cast as Captain Jericho in Terminator Salvation.
Originally, his character was Lieutenant Barnes's brother who got caught up in a raid on a Skynet base that John Connor lead in the opening sequence.
However, all of his scenes were cut in post-production — except for a shot where his character is already dead.
He didn't know that he was barely in the movie anymore until the first time he watched the finished film.
3. Timothée Chalamet played Tom in Interstellar.
At the screening, he was so disappointed that his role wasn't as big as he'd expected that he "wept for an hour."
He told Variety that he also felt like a "fraud" because he "really had no career at this point."
4. Harry Holland was cast to play a robber who's caught by Spider-Man in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
His upside-down stunt was the brainchild of his older brother Tom, who asked the stunt coordinator to "make it so he's upside down" because Harry had told him to "suck it up" when he complained about filming upside-down.
However, Tom saw a cut of the movie before Harry did and learned that the scene had been cut — which he revealed on The Graham Norton Show.
5. Peter Serafinowicz voiced Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.
He secretly reprised his role in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
However, the day after the premiere, he discovered two things via Twitter — (1) there had been a premiere, and (2) he wasn't invited.
Later, he learned something much more devastating via email — he'd been replaced by Sam Witwer, who voiced Darth Maul in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Lego Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out, and Star Wars Rebels.
6. Abby Ryder Fortson played Cassie Lang in Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, but after the five-year time-jump in Avengers: Endgame, Emma Fuhrmann took over the role.
However, during Disney's Investor Day announcements in 2020, Emma learned — along with the rest of the internet — that Kathryn Newton would be playing Cassie in the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Expressing her gratitude for the outpouring of support from fans on Twitter, Emma said, "I was as sad as you all were to hear the news Thursday. I can only hope that this means there is something else for me in the future of the MCU."
7. Jack Whitehall voiced Gothi the troll priest in Frozen. He had one line: "I trollfully pronounce you man and wife."
He told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that when he went to see the movie in theaters, he realized that right before Gothi was supposed to deliver his line, it cut away to Elsa.
He said that afterwards, he called his agent, who apologized for forgetting to tell Jack that Disney had called to say his part was reduced to a "non-speaking role."
However, Jack got the last laugh by making the story part of his stand-up routine.
8. Adrien Brody played Corporal Geoffrey Fife in The Thin Red Line — and he was supposed to be the star.
He did boot camp to prepare for the role, and then he spent six months filming in the Australian outback.
However, when he got back to the US, he discovered that his role had been reduced to a minor character. He told the Independent, "It was extremely unpleasant because I'd already begun the press for a film that I wasn't really in."
9. In 2004, Robert Pattinson landed his first movie role — the adult version of Rawdon Crawley in Vanity Fair.
However, at the screening, he learned all of his scenes were cut. He told Vanity Fair magazine, "I’m sitting there going, ‘Ummm . . . really?’ No one had told me that I had been cut out."
The casting director felt so bad about not telling him his scenes were cut that she got him an audition for a character in another movie she was working on — Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
10. Eva Mendes played Trish in Exit Wounds.
At a screening, she realized that something was off about her character — it wasn't her voice.
When she confronted the producers, they told her that they dubbed her voice because, in their opinion, she "didn’t sound intelligent enough."
11. Mickey Rourke played Whiplash in Iron Man 2.
He worked with the writer and director to add dimension and complexity to the character, but "most of the performance ended up [on] the floor."
"Unfortunately, the [people] at Marvel just wanted a one-dimensional bad guy," he told Crave Online.
12. Sam Benjamin had "a 20-30 minute story" as a military policeman in Justice League.
When Joss Whedon took over as director from Zack Snyder, "that whole arc [he] was in was completely gone."
However, Sam's role was restored in Zack Snyder's Justice League.
13. And finally, David Prowse played the body of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. While filming A New Hope, he assumed he was going to provide the character's voice, too.
However, David's voice earned him the nickname "Darth Farmer" on set, and director George Lucas cast James Earl Jones to dub Darth Vader's lines.
Fight choreographer Bob Anderson took over the Darth Vader role for several fight scenes, and in Return of the Jedi, Sebastian Shaw replaced David as Darth Vader's ghost.
