George Clooney Reveals Mark Wahlberg and Johnny Depp Turned Down OCEAN'S ELEVEN and "They Regret It Now"
George Clooney recently revealed a fun bit of movie trivia regarding Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven involving a couple of big Hollywood stars that turned down the opportunity to star in the films.
During the 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival, Clooney and Soderbergh celebrated the classic 2001 film. During that event, Clooney shared that Mark Wahlberg and Johnny Depp were both offered the role of Linus before it ultimately went to Matt Damon.
Clooney said: “Steven had just done Erin Brockovich and Traffic, and he was nominated for directing both films. So, people really wanted to work with Steven.”
Soderbergh then added that some actors turned down the offer with Clooney saying: “They did. Some very famous people told us to f**k right off. Mark Wahlberg, Johnny Depp. There were others. They regret it now. I regret doing f***ing Batman.”
I liked what Damon ended up bringing to the role in the film, but I could also see Wahlberg in the role. Depp… not so much.
Soderberg went on to talk about how the idea of making Ocean’s Eleven came about, saying: “It felt like the next iteration in my desire to work in the mainstream film business and make movies that could be released in a lot of theaters.”
Clooney added, “It’s also important to understand where we were at the time. The studios were making very big, broad, not very good films at that time. Steven had this idea of trying to infuse all of this independent film stuff that all of these young filmmakers were learning back into the studio system. It was going to get back to the things that they were doing from like 1964 to 1975.”
When they ended up delivering worked perfectly! I loved that first Ocean’s Eleven film. The other two movies were entertaining as well, but they weren’t as good as the first one. There was something magical about it.
Source: EW