Actors Who Auditioned To Play The Hero And Ended Up As The Villain

It’s hard to imagine anyone else but Chris Hemsworth as the God of Thunder in Marvel’s Thor and Avengers franchises. And it’s even harder to think of the guy who played his nemesis, Loki, wielding the mighty Mjolnir. Yet Tom Hiddleston did nearly get the part, and you can see his (somewhat odd but impressive) audition tape on YouTube. He never actually tried out for the role of Loki, but impressed the filmmakers enough to be hired as the God of Mischief.

Bearing no ill will over the decision, Hiddleston spoke well of Hemsworth on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: “I think we can all agree that they cast the right actor.”

The late actor who gave us the greatest portrayal of a DCU supervillain nearly got the job as its coolest superhero (George Clooney’s tenure as the dark nipple knight notwithstanding).

Heath Ledger was actually Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan's first choice to play Batman before Christian Bale was ever considered. Luckily, both agreed that Ledger wouldn’t really work as Bruce Wayne, so he was instead given the opportunity to win an Academy Award playing the Joker.

There have been a wide array of actors who played, tried to play, or were considered to play Batman over the years. One of them was Cillian Murphy, who wouldn't get to play the hero Gotham deserves, but wound up instead wearing the mask of the Dark Knight's creepiest enemy, the Scarecrow. Per Esquire, Murphy even got as far as wriggling into Val Kilmer's old Batsuit, but the powers that be didn't believe he would work as Bruce Wayne.

Murphy was probably grateful to stay with the franchise, even if it wasn't as the heroic lead. After all, as he revealed on Late Night with Seth Meyers, "It was obvious that Christian Bale was going to be Batman."

Most characters on Game of Thrones don’t tend to enjoy much longevity, as Westeros is a treacherous and backstabby place. However, Kit Harrington managed to prolong his character Jon Snow’s demise until Season 5, and then got resurrected so that he could see things to the bitter end.

As the evil Ramsay Bolton only made it to Season 6 before being eaten by his own dogs, Iwan Rheon, the actor who played him but who Time reported also read for the part of Snow, may have wished he had landed the part of the hero instead.

Before Robert Downey Jr. became the person everyone on Earth associates with the MCU character Tony Stark, Academy Award-winner Sam Rockwell was approached by Iron Man director Jon Favreau as a possible choice for the billionaire playboy superhero in question, as told to The AV Club. While he didn't get to become a comic book icon to billions, he did manage to make it into Iron Man 2 as the jerky industrialist Justin Hammer.

It’s hard to argue that he would have done a better job than RDJ, but Favreau was diplomatic when he noted how "Sam would have come up with interesting and different things."

Lee Pace was pretty much unrecognizable under all that makeup in Guardians of the Galaxy. But before he became the fearsome Kree known as Ronan the Accuser, he was among those on the short list who were summoned before director James Gunn to see if they would make a serviceable Star-Lord.

As we all know now, Chris Pratt was deemed more serviceable than any of them, although Pace apparently did well enough for Gunn to issue him the Cosmi-Rod war-hammer and have him start accusing.