Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, and Meryl Streep Were Nearly Cast in ALMOST FAMOUS
It’s been 20 years since the release of the classic coming-of-age film Almost Famous, the semi-autobiographical story of the film’s writer and director, Cameron Crowe. The movie told the story of a teenage writer, William, played by Patrick Fugit, who gets a job writing for Rolling Stone, and goes on the road with a rock band. The rest of the cast was brilliantly played by Billy Crudup, who portrayed rocker Russell Hammond; groupie Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson; and Frances McDormand played William’s nervous mother.
The movie is beloved, and really captures the essence of rock n roll in the early 1970s. But the movie was almost cast very differently. In a recent podcast put out by James Andrew Miller called Origins - Almost Famous Turns 20!, Crowe talked about casting the film, particularly Russell and Penny Lane’s characters, saying:
“Brad Pitt was on my mind because I had a really good meeting with him around the time of Say Anything, and he was just starting out, and he just really had something. So I called him with this to play Russell Hammond, and we spent about four months working on it. He read with Natalie Portman.”
It obviously didn’t work out for Pitt and Portman, which broke Crowe’s heart.
“I wept. I knew that [Brad Pitt] had never fully fallen in love with the character. He had fallen in love with the idea of the character. But maybe there just wasn’t enough on the page. He told me [money] wasn’t the case. I think it was probably half and half. I think he was also uncomfortable with the age difference between Russell and Penny Lane.”
He went on to add that Meryl Streep was in talks to take on the role of Patrick’s mother. I love her, and I think she could really play any role, but I just love McDormand as a neurotic mother. She was gold in this role, as always, and I like the choice he made to cast her.
Check out the podcast in the link above, and let us know if you would have liked any of those actors in the roles.