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The National
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Simone Ashley in F1? Harrison Ford in E.T.? 10 actors cut from movies
It's every actor's worst nightmare. You're attached to a project for months if not years, it finally gets greenlit and you film your scenes – only to end up on the cutting room floor. Case in point: Simone Ashley, the Bridgerton star due to appear opposite Brad Pitt in the exhilarating new motor-racing drama F1 The Movie. 'It happens on every film,' director Joseph Kosinski (of F1 and Top Gun: Maverick fame) told People magazine, noting how there are often two or three storylines that get dropped. Ashley can, however, take comfort that she's is great company. Here are nine major actors who did not make the final cut in critically acclaimed films. Harrison Ford in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Even the star who played Indiana Jones and Han Solo isn't immune to the chop. Harrison Ford shot a role as Elliott Taylor's high-school principal in Steven Spielberg's 1982 sci-fi classic, about a boy who befriends an alien. The scene had Ford lecturing Elliott (Henry Thomas), about his behaviour after he sets frogs free in his biology class. But Spielberg cut it, feeling Ford's appearance would shift focus away from Elliott. Mickey Rourke in The Thin Red Line Many an actor has fallen foul of director Terrence Malick, known for pondering for years in the editing room, including Mickey Rourke. Playing a scout sniper in the 1998 all-star Second World War drama The Thin Red Line, featuring the likes of Adrien Brody and Sean Penn, Rourke was snipped from the final edit. 'There were political reasons why I was out of the movie. That really upset me,' he said, believing his wild off-screen reputation had led to the decision. Kevin Spacey in All The Money In The World When actor Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct, director Ridley Scott cut all of Spacey's scenes in this 2017 drama about the kidnapping of the grandson of wealthy tycoon John Paul Getty. It was impossible to excise Getty from the story, however, which meant Scott recast the character, bringing in Christopher Plummer and reshooting all the scenes. Plummer even got an Oscar nod. Paul Rudd in Bridesmaids One of the great losses in Paul Feig's stellar 2011 romcom is Paul Rudd 's turn as an unhinged guy who singleton Annie (Kristen Wiig) dates. They go ice-skating and he slips over, injuring his finger and cursing at children. It was cut because Annie already had too many other paramours, making it potentially confusing for audiences, but the scene is hilarious. Check it out online. May Calamawy in Gladiator II The Egyptian-Palestinian actress, famed for Marvel TV show Moon Knight, suffered the same fate as F1 's Simone Ashley. Her role in Ridley Scott's 2024 Gladiator sequel was drastically pruned, with just brief glimpses of her left in the final film, and no dialogue. While it was never revealed who she played (though she hinted at working with Denzel Washington, who played gladiator owner Macrinus), it's likely her subplot was a victim of the film's unwieldy 148-minute run-time. Tobey Maguire in The Life of Pi In 2012, when Ang Lee's take on Yann Martel's novel hit cinemas, Tobey Maguire was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, thanks to his titular role in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. But this is exactly why Lee decided to drop Maguire as the reporter who listens to the fantastical tale of a boy shipwrecked with a Bengal tiger. Lee reshot the scenes with English actor Rafe Spall, as Maguire was deemed too distracting. Robert Pattinson in Vanity Fair These days, cutting Robert Pattinson would be unthinkable. But back in 2004, in what should've been his screen debut as the son of Reese Witherspoon's Becky Sharp, he was severed from Vanity Fair. The film is director (and mother of Zohran Mamdani) Mira Nair's take on William Makepeace Thackeray's classic Victorian novel. According to Pattinson, the casting director was so apologetic, she pushed him forward to play Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter films. The rest, as they say, is history. Ana de Armas in Yesterday Before Knives Out, No Time To Die and Ballerina, Ana de Armas was set to charm us in Danny Boyle's 2019 Beatles-infused romcom Yesterday. Playing a girl who catches the eye of struggling musician Jack (Himesh Patel), de Armas' character didn't play well with test audiences, who objected to the leading man's eyes straying from his main love interest, Ellie (Lily James). De Armas still made the trailer, though, as Jack sings to her on James Corden's talk show. Sienna Miller in Black Mass Another actress to fall foul of the unwanted girlfriend role, British star Miller was dropped from Scott Cooper's 2015 gangster epic. It was something of a surprise, given she portrayed Catherine Greig, the girlfriend of mobster Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp), who helped him avoid capture for 16 years. But with Dakota Johnson already playing Lyndsey, his love interest from an earlier part of his life, Miller's role got the figurative bullet to the head.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What challenges did RI native Michael Shawver overcome editing the movie 'Sinners'?
NORTH PROVIDENCE – If you stay for the credits at the end of the hit movie "Sinners," you'll see the name of 41-year-old North Providence native "Michael P. Shawver" fill the screen. Shawver, who graduated from Ponaganset High School and now lives in Woodland Hills, California, with his 9-year-old son, Ben, is credited as the editor of "Sinners," a wildly popular and multifaceted film that ultimately gets classified as a "vampire movie." "A lot of people don't really realize how much goes into editing a feature film," Shawver told The Providence Journal in late April. "Most movies, I'm on for 10 months to a year, 12-hour days. An editor has their hands and helps out in every different department. Ultimately, we're sort of the gatekeepers of the movie in a way and plot out the emotional blueprint for the experience of the audience. We're the first audience." He got his love of movies from weekly family movie nights at home with his parents, Paul and Barbara, and older sister, Jessica. But it quickly snowballed from there. "When I was around 12, my parents bought one of those big chunky VHS camcorders," Shawver said. "I would take that camera out and go make whatever movies I could with my friends. I fell in love with and got addicted to that feeling of creating something, and then showing other people." With that, the die was cast. "That ability to do something that came from me that could affect other people was really profound for me," he said. "So, as a teenager, I talked about making movies most of my life." After majoring in communications studies at the University of Rhode Island, he Googled "best film schools in the world" and packed up his car and headed to the University of Southern California in 2008. That's where he first teamed up with Ryan Coogler, making possible later collaborations such as "Black Panther," "Creed," and this year's "Sinners." "I had met Ryan in a directing class, and he was just making things that were above and beyond anybody else at the time," Shawver said. "He was making things that would make you think and feel things and change your mind and open your eyes about things and different walks of life. I realized I can have the same joy of storytelling and creating from editing and helping someone who is doing things at a different level than myself." "To be honest, the biggest obstacle has always been sort of myself and my anxiety," Shawver said. "It's a big responsibility to create and be artistic under deadlines. As an artist, putting your work out there to the world, there's always a bit of, 'Is this good enough? Am I good enough?'" But the challenges of editing aren't just psychological. "In terms of actually like the physical, technical aspects of editing, it's keeping everything in front of you and being mindful and being present," he said. "Editing is, it's a puzzle. But you don't have a picture on the box in front of you to tell you what the answers are. So you have to be in tune with what the story needs to be, what you want the audience to feel." Editors will watch the movie hundreds of times while working on it, almost constantly tweaking, putting material in or taking it out. And then they show it to a producer or director or test audience, who may find that it doesn't work and needs even more tweaking. "I don't know how many hours officially were shot, but we were there 55 days or so, and each day there would be anywhere between six to eight hours of footage. There could be anywhere between three to 10 hours of footage per scene," Shawver said. "That is one of the difficult things: How do you pick those moments?" And "Sinners" had the added complication of actor Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers, Shawver said. "Instead of choosing one take, I have got to have two takes, and do they match? Does the performance match? Do the twins feel different enough?" "In general, per scene there's hours and hours of footage that sometimes just have to get boiled down to a minute and a half, two minutes." "If you can have people lost in it and have a relationship between themselves and the movie in terms of their own experiences, their own hopes and fears, you know that's when you're winning," said Shawver. So he said he trained himself to watch raw footage that way, as the movie's "first audience." "If it makes me feel happy, sad, tear up, afraid, scared – anything, those are the pieces," he said. "So then those become my puzzle pieces, and then the rest is, 'OK, how do I get to these moments? How do I build up to make this moment the best thing?' It's a lot of trial and error." "I do want to write and direct a movie that takes place and is shot in in Rhode Island," he said. "I think Rhode Island is the most untapped resource for film making. The fact that you can go from the beach, and then 10 minutes later you're in the woods, and then 10 minutes later in the suburbs, and then you're in the city, and then another 10 minutes you're on a farm. The locations are beautiful. The history, the old buildings and hidden railways and factories and all that. It's just such a beautiful place." He'd like to work on the remake of "The Thomas Crown Affair," starring and directed by Michael B. Jordan. This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: What went into making and editing Michael B. Jordan's 'Sinners'?
