Russell Crowe has been in a lot of big films. So many that he can sense when something fits, or not. Case in point: the time Crowe was up for a major role in Peter Jackson‘s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
He was solicited for the role of Aragorn, which eventually went to Viggo Mortensen. In an interview with British GQ, Crowe talked about the delicate dance of casting.
Crowe, a big Tolkien fan, soon subtly discovered that director Jackson wasn’t keen on him as Aragorn. “I very much felt the studio were making that (casting) decision, not the film director,” he said. “And I talked to Peter Jackson over the phone, and he wasn’t saying the sort of things that directors were saying to you if they were really trying to attract you to a project.
And I just kind of got a sense that he already had somebody else in mind that he wanted to do. And me stepping forward and saying yes was actually going to get in his way.
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