You'll be familiar with some of these near-misses, but others are frankly astonishing. Which rapper almost took Matt Damon's role in Elysium? Which former Friends star was the first choice to front Men in Black? And why is Leonardo DiCaprio Christian Bale's nemesis? Read on...

1. Al Pacino – Star Wars

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Pacino revealed during a Q&A session in 2015 that the role of roguish smuggler Han Solo was "his for the taking" back in the '70s, but he turned it down because he didn't understand the script. Harrison Ford made the role iconic and ended up having his own issues with Lucas's script, famously telling the director "You can type this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."

2. Tom Selleck – Indiana Jones

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The first choice for the role back in the day was none other than Tom "The Moustache" Selleck. He recently set the record straight on rumours that he turned down Indy – Spielberg and his producers held out for a month in the hopes Selleck would become available, but CBS refused to let him out of his Magnum PI contract.

3. Henry Cavill – Casino Royale

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Prior to being cast as Superman, Henry Cavill was the perpetual franchise bridesmaid and never the bride. He was cast to play Supes in McG's cancelled movie before being replaced by Bryan Singer with Brandon Routh, and he was a frontrunner for Twilight's Edward Cullen. Before both these near-misses, Cavill was neck-and-neck with Daniel Craig for the chance to play Casino Royale's steely new James Bond, and lost out to Craig because 007's producers wanted someone older.

4. Leonardo DiCaprio – American Psycho

Bale was initially cast as killer yuppie Patrick Bateman, but was unceremoniously replaced by Lionsgate after DiCaprio began pursuing the role, fresh off his Titanic success. Bale was "obsessed" with the project and reclaimed it after ferocious lobbying, but his beef with DiCaprio supposedly predated the Brett Easton Ellis adaptation by several years. Bale lost This Boy's Life and What's Eating Gilbert Grape to DiCaprio, and unsuccessfully campaigned for the role of Jack in Titanic.

Related: Here's how the Harry Potter films almost looked...

5. Anne Hathaway – Silver Linings Playbook

It's safe to say that Jennifer Lawrence and David O Russell mesh well together; Lawrence won her first Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook and was nominated for his American Hustle, and the enthused O Russell went on to cast her in his biopic of Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano. But Lawrence's role as Playbook's volatile Tiffany was earmarked for Anne Hathaway, who dropped out over "creative differences" with the famously prickly director. Hathaway won her own Oscar for Les Misérables, so this all worked out for the best.

6. Angelina Jolie – Gravity

An impressive list of actresses were considered to shoulder the lead role in Alfonso Cuarón's spectacular space drama, including Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz and Marion Cotillard. But Angelina Jolie was the firm frontrunner to play astronaut Ryan Stone, but was unable to take the role thanks to scheduling conflicts with either her directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey, or her role in Maleficent, or both. Sandra Bullock went on to earn a slew of nominations for her physically and emotionally gruelling turn.

7. Michael Fassbender – Pearl Harbour

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Yeah, this one came as a surprise. One of Fassbender's very first professional auditions was for the role of soldier Rafe McCawley in Michael Bay's Pearl Harbour, which ultimately went to Ben Affleck. It would be another seven years before Fassbender got his break in Steve McQueen's Hunger, but he might have dodged a bullet – Pearl Harbour was a critical disaster even by Bay's low standards, and might have done Fassbender more harm than good had it been audiences' first exposure to him.

8. Hailee Steinfeld – The Hunger Games

Every young actress in Hollywood was vying for the role of The Hunger Games' tough-as-nails heroine, but Steinfeld – along with Abigail Breslin and Nikita star Lyndsy Fonseca – was one of the few contenders to make it down to the wire. It's easy to understand why she got close; both Steinfeld and first choice Jennifer Lawrence were nominated for Oscars in the year the role was cast, and both earned their nods for playing grounded, resourceful young women in True Grit and Winter's Bone respectively.

9. Eminem – Elysium

Director Neill Blomkamp dropped this bombshell in an interview with Wired. Prior to casting Matt Damon, Blomkamp was looking to go unconventional with the casting of reluctant hero Max, and was turned down by South African rap-rave icon Ninja from Die Antwoord before approaching Eminem. The real Slim Shady was interested, but only on the condition that the film shot in his hometown of Detroit. Denied. Ninja, by the way, later appeared in Blomkamp's Chappie.

10. Gwyneth Paltrow – Jurassic Park

It's widely known that Paltrow was in the running for Kate Winslet's role in Titanic, but a few years earlier she missed out on the female lead in a similarly iconic blockbuster. Having worked with Steven Spielberg previously on 1991's Hook, the still unknown Paltrow screen-tested for the role of plucky paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, which eventually went to Laura Dern.

11. Will Smith – The Matrix

Smith and Ewan McGregor were both offered the role of The One in the Wachowskis' groundbreaking cyberpunk saga, and both passed. Smith has since admitted that he wouldn't have been a good fit for the project, explaining: "I would have absolutely messed up The Matrix. I wasn't smart enough as an actor to let the movie be, whereas Keanu was smart enough to just let it be."

12. Robin Williams – Harry Potter

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A lot of the Potter series' alternative casting choices are easy to picture – Tim Roth as Snape, Hugh Grant as Lockhart – but Robin Williams as gentle giant Hagrid? That's a struggle, and it came very, very close to happening before JK Rowling made the stipulation that only British actors could be cast in the adaptations. Williams was a great actor, and one of his best performances (Good Will Hunting) was also one of his beardiest, but Hagrid he ain't.

13. Tom Cruise – Iron Man

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When the concept of an Iron Man-centric movie was first in development back in the late '90s, Tom Cruise was in line to produce and star as Tony Stark. Supposedly, Stan Lee also had a hand in one draft of the script and Quentin Tarantino was among the names considered to direct. While it's very unlikely Iron Man would have become the franchise lynchpin he has under Robert Downey Jr, this version does sound bizarrely fascinating.

14. OJ Simpson – Terminator

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No, seriously. Back in the early stages of Terminator's development – long before the murder trial in 1994 – Simpson was suggested to play the title role. The football player had enjoyed a decent sideline in acting, with roles in The Naked Gun trilogy and The Towering Inferno among others, but James Cameron and his producers ultimately looked elsewhere because, and we quote, "People wouldn't have believed a nice guy like OJ playing the part of a ruthless killer".

15. Jake Gyllenhaal – Batman Begins

In 2003 when Christopher Nolan was casting the reboot that would spearhead arguably the most critically acclaimed superhero franchise of all time, Gyllenhaal was still a relative unknown, with Donnie Darko gradually gathering cult steam and Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow still a year away from release. Still, he was scriptwriter David Goyer's first choice for the role of Bruce Wayne, but ultimately Nolan passed him over in favour of the older Christian Bale.

16. David Schwimmer – Men in Black

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Ross Geller could have been Agent J. Schwimmer was offered the chance to star opposite Tommy Lee Jones, but chose to turn it down in favour of joining Gwyneth Paltrow in poorly received rom-com The Pallbearer, supposedly because he wanted to "grow rather than go for the quick cash". It's fair to say that decision maybe didn't work out exactly the way he'd hoped.

17. Emily Blunt – Iron Man 2

Not many of the entries on this list leave you feeling wistful for what could have been, but Emily Blunt as Marvel's duplicitous Black Widow feels like close to perfect casting. Scarlett Johansson has done well with the role, but Blunt has a very different, more cerebral presence on screen that could have made up for the character's patchy writing in Iron Man 2.

18. Jim Carrey – Pirates of the Caribbean

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It's not hyperbole to say that Jack Sparrow would not exist were it not for Johnny Depp. Yes, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio's original script did feature a character by that name, but everybody involved in the franchise has made it clear that it was Depp's performance, part Keith Richards, part Pepé Le Pew, all inspired madness, that made the character an insta-icon. Carrey was Disney's first choice, and we don't feel too bereft for not knowing what his Sparrow would have looked like.

19. Jack Nicholson – The Godfather

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Al Pacino inhabits Michael Corleone so completely throughout his gradual, three-film-long arc from hero to villain that it's hard to imagine anybody else in the role. But Jack Nicholson was reportedly Francis Ford Coppola's first choice, and turned the role down because "at that time I believed Indians should play roles written for Indians, and Italians should do the same".

20. Josh Hartnett – Thor

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Nothing against Josh Hartnett, but it's hard to imagine that his take on Thor's treacherous brother Loki would have become the breakout fan favourite that he has under Tom Hiddleston's watch. Hartnett reportedly had several meetings with director Kenneth Branagh for the role, around the same time Alexander Skarsgård was rumoured to be the frontrunner for Thor.

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