5 Roles In David Fincher Movies That Were Perfectly Cast (& Who Almost Played Them)

David Fincher has been one of the most celebrated directors in the world for almost three decades. His filmmaking career got off to a rocky start with Alien 3 – the director famously butted heads with the studio throughout production – but he’s since helmed such acclaimed hits as Se7en, Fight Club, and Gone Girl.

While Fincher is more renowned for his visual flourishes and editing tricks than his characters, he tends to cast the perfect actors to bring iconic characters like Tyler Durden and Amy Dunne to life. But they weren’t always the first choice for the role.

5 Tyler Durden In Fight Club

Perfectly Cast: Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt was the perfect actor to embody what Tyler Durden represents in Fight Club. Tyler is everything the Narrator isn’t – confident, outgoing, happy-go-lucky – and he’s charming enough to inspire a cult following.

Thanks to Pitt’s movie-star charisma, the audience is just as captivated and seduced by Tyler as the followers of Project Mayhem. Pitt really leans into the darkness of the role (especially later in the movie).

Almost Cast: Russell Crowe

According to MovieWeb, the producers of Fight Club were initially interested in casting Russell Crowe as Tyler. Although L.A. Confidential had been released, Gladiator still had yet to make Crowe a bankable star and Fox executives wanted a bigger name for the role.

Pitt was the kind of rising star they wanted, and since Fincher had already worked with him on Se7en, he was able to secure the A-lister’s involvement.

4 Detective Lieutenant William Somerset In Se7en

Perfectly Cast: Morgan Freeman

Fincher’s unsettling serial killer thriller Se7en plays like a grisly horror version of a buddy cop movie in which a veteran detective on the brink of retirement is reluctantly paired up with the new guy.

Morgan Freeman’s grizzled, aging lawman makes an interesting counterpoint for Brad Pitt’s hotshot rookie. Freeman brought plenty of nuance to the proceedings to avoid playing a straightforward archetype.

Almost Cast: Al Pacino

According to CinemaBlend, before the role of Somerset was offered to Freeman, it was offered to Al Pacino. Pacino was the producers’ first choice for the part, but he turned it down.

Ned Beatty was sent the script but told the producers, “I can’t do this. This is the most evil thing I’ve ever read.” And that’s the actor who appeared in one of cinema’s most notoriously dark and violent sequences in Deliverance.

3 Amy Dunne In Gone Girl

Perfectly Cast: Rosamund Pike

Rosamund Pike was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her sinister portrayal of Amy Dunne, but she lost to Julianne Moore for her powerful performance in Still Alice.

Pike embodied the Amy character from Gillian Flynn’s source novel spectacularly. She nailed both the friendly facade and the unbridled creepiness hiding underneath that facade.

Almost Cast: Reese Witherspoon

According to CinemaBlend, when Reese Witherspoon initially snapped up the rights to Gone Girl as a producer, she intended to play Amy herself. But when Fincher came aboard as the director, he didn’t think she was right for the part.

Witherspoon explained, “Whenever David Fincher says he wants to do a project, you just sit back and say, ‘Whatever you want to do.’ We had a long conversation where he was like, ‘You’re not right for it. And this is why.’ And I actually completely agreed with him.” So, Pike was cast and Witherspoon stayed on as a producer.

2 Meg Altman In Panic Room

Perfectly Cast: Jodie Foster

Arguably Fincher’s most Hitchcockian thriller, Panic Room plays on a couple of universally relatable human emotions, like the fear of a home invasion and a mother’s desperate struggle to protect her daughter.

Jodie Foster is the kind of true everywoman that this role required. The audience can really relate to her throughout the movie. She also has the chops as a star to carry a whole movie on her shoulders.

Almost Cast: Nicole Kidman

According to Entertainment Weekly, before Foster was cast in the lead role in Panic Room, Nicole Kidman was attached to play the part.

Kidman ended up having to drop out due to a knee injury sustained during the filming of Moulin Rouge!, so she was replaced by Foster.

1 Paul Avery In Zodiac

Perfectly Cast: Robert Downey, Jr.

Paul Avery was a journalist whose reporting on the Zodiac killings made his name (along with his reporting on the Patty Hearst kidnapping), so it was fitting for Fincher to frame the story of Zodiac from his perspective.

Robert Downey, Jr. gives one of his all-time strongest performances in the role, and this was a few years before his Iron Man comeback made him one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

Almost Cast: Daniel Craig

According to WhatCulture, both Brad Pitt and Daniel Craig were considered for the lead role in Zodiac before Downey was cast.

Pitt, of course, had been a collaborator of Fincher’s for years. Craig hadn’t worked with Fincher before, but would later work with the director on his English-language remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

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Ben Sherlock
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Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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