18 Roles That Were Almost Played By Waay Different Actors

Our most famous characters from movies and shows are inextricably tied to the people who played them. We all know Christopher Reeves was Superman and James Earl Jones was Darth Vader and unfortunately some of us know that David Spade was Joe Dirt. Buy the ticket, take the ride - as Johnny Depp as Hunter Thompson told us. And it's impossible to separate the performance from the character. But casting changes all the time. Studio back alley deal and machinations are the stuff of legend and when you really boil it down - the convoluted process run by world-class yo-yos produces a situation where at the end of the day it's basically fairly random chance that gives us the characters played by actors we learn to know so well.

Here's a look at some casting choices that almost became reality, and how the characters would have looked with the actors who narrowly missed playing them.