10 Actresses Who Turned Down a Role That Won Someone Else an Oscar

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Hollywood casting is a strange and often ruthless business, and sometimes the biggest winner in a story is the actress who said no. Scheduling conflicts, personal doubts about a script, or simple bad timing have handed some of the most celebrated Oscar-winning performances in history to actresses who weren’t even the studio’s first choice. Here are ten cases where a star walked away from a role, only to watch someone else take home the golden statue for it.

1. Julia Roberts – Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Before Gwyneth Paltrow ever stepped onto the Elizabethan-era set, Julia Roberts was attached to play the female lead. According to co-star Simon Callow, Julia Roberts walked away from Shakespeare In Love when she couldn’t get Daniel Day-Lewis to costar, leaving Gwyneth Paltrow to fill her shoes and win the Oscar, with Callow noting “Daniel wasn’t interested, so Julia withdrew.”

It’s one of those quiet what-ifs that rarely gets talked about compared to other missed roles in Roberts’ career. Paltrow ended up delivering a performance that felt destined, and the Best Actress win became one of the more debated Oscar moments of the late 1990s. Roberts, for her part, has never publicly dwelled on it the way she has with other near-misses.

2. Michelle Pfeiffer – The Silence of the Lambs (1991)