Courtney Love Says She Was Fired From FIGHT CLUB After Rejecting Brad Pitt's Pitch for a Kurt Cobain Movie
Fan-favorite and cult classic flick Fight Club is one of director David Fincher’s most quoted, discussed, and re-watched films in his career, alongside huge hits like Se7en, The Game, Panic Room, Zodiac, and The Social Network, of course. It’s arguably one of the best of both Brad Pitt and Edward Norton’s careers, but Marla Singer, played by Helena Bonham Carter, was possibly almost played by Hole frontwoman Courtney Love.
Love says in a recent interview on the “WTF” podcast that she was hired by David Fincher to star in the film as Marla, coming off her role in The People vs. Larry Flynt, but was thwarted by Brad Pitt!
Love said she “went nuclear” on Pitt after he and director Gus Van Sant approached her about making a Kurt Cobain movie. Love and Cobain married in 1992, and they were together until his death in 1994 at age 27. Van Sant eventually made the Cobain-inspired drama Last Days, starring Michael Pitt, but Love said this wasn’t the project Pitt and the director wanted her approval on.
“I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt,” Love said. “I went nuclear. I don’t do Faust. Who the f**k do you think you are?” Love added that she told Pitt the following:
“I don’t know if I trust you and I don’t know that your movies are for profit. They’re really good social justice movies, but…if you don’t get me, you kind of don’t get Kurt, and I don’t feel like you do, Brad.”
It was after rejecting Pitt’s Cobain movie that Love alleges she was then fired from Fight Club, and her then-boyfriend and star of the film, Edward Norton, broke the news to her.
“He starts sobbing. And he was like, ‘I don’t have the power!’”
A source close to the film confirmed to Variety that Love did audition for the role in Fight Club but said she was not offered the part.
“You cannot be fired for a job you didn’t get. It’s common knowledge that roles are not decided by other actors but by the director.”
Fincher allegedly called Love afterwards to confirm she was off the movie. Bonham Carter took over the role, and the rest is history. I have no idea if Love was officially offered the role, but I like HBC in the part, so it doesn’t make much of a difference to me. What do you think? Should Love have had the part of Marla Singer in Fight Club?