10 Stars Who Lost Out on Great Roles: Elle Fanning, Reese Witherspoon and More

When she was 37, Maggie Gyllenhaal was told by a Hollywood producer she was simply "too old" to play the love interest opposite a 55-year-old man, she said during an interview with TheWrap.

"It was astonishing to me," she said. "It made me feel bad, and then it make me angry, and then it made me laugh."

After trying for the role of Lisbeth Salander in the 2011 movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Scarlett Johansson lost it to Rooney Mara for not being fragile enough. But afterwards, she said Mara was the right pick after all!

Elle Fanning explained during a roundtable discussion with The Hollywood Reporter that she auditioned for a movie when she was 16 years old, and "a person said, 'Oh, she didn't get the father-daughter road trip comedy because she's unf-------.' It's so disgusting. And I can laugh at it now, like 'What a disgusting pig.'"

Zoë Kravitz was told she was "too urban" for a role in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises.

She talked about auditioning for the part in a 2015 interview with Nylon, revealing she wasn't even allowed in the auditioning room. 10 years later, she would go on to get the part of Selina Kyle (Catwoman) in the 2022 film The Batman.

Reese Witherspoon told Harper's Bazaar that she'd been declined for a role because she was simply "too smart" to play a female heroine in a movie.

She went on to say how for Hollywood roles, "I was always considered TOO something. Too short. Too feisty. Too energetic. I once got told I seemed too smart to play a young female character."

But, she added, "Sometimes the universe is protecting you from a bad job or a toxic relationship. So remember next time you fail at something or someone leaves you heartbroken ... let yourself be sad, grieve what didn't happen for a minute but move on. Better things are waiting for you."

Winona Ryder said in an interview with The Sunday Times that she was overlooked for a part because she was Jewish.

She added, "There are times when people have said, 'Wait, you're Jewish? But you're so pretty!'"

The Stranger Things star also revealed in a "Happy Sad Confused" podcast that she was in the middle of an audition when a casting director interrupted her and said, "You should not be an actress. You are not pretty enough. You should go back to wherever you came from and you should go to school. You don't have it."

René-Jean Page shared with Variety that he lost the role of Superman's grandfather in the movie Krypton because he was Black.

A show bigwig said, "Superman couldn't have a black grandfather."

He later said on the social media site X, "Hearing about these conversations hurts no less than it did back then."

Nia Long revealed in Entertainment Weekly that she lost the role of investigator Alex Munday in the movie Charlie's Angels — which went to Lucy Liu — because she was "too Black" and "too old."

Meryl Streep revealed on The Graham Norton Show in 2015 that she was denied a role in the movie King Kong because she was "too ugly."

The man said something to his son, who was in the room, in Italian, and Streep said, "Because I understand Italian, he said, 'Why do you bring me this ugly thing?'"

She went on to prove HIM wrong!

Actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that she intentionally left her handbag behind after auditioning with her phone in recording mode so she could go back inside and catch what they had been saying about her.

"I'd be like, 'Oh, I forgot my purse in there.'"

She said that when she listened later she would hear insults like, "She's so ghetto. I just can't," "Her b---- aren't big enough" and "I really think we should just go with a white girl."