10. Carey Mulligan Turned Down Rooney Mara's Role In Her
Granted, there are four interesting female parts in Spike Jonez's latest film, Her, which tells the story of a lowly love letter writer - played by Joaquin Phoenix - who falls in love with his operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Despite the fact that Johansson's A.I. character, "Samantha," is never once seen on screen, the role is arguably the movie's juiciest - Johansson has received huge acclaim for her romantic, endearing work here, and deservedly so. The movie also stars Amy Adams, Olivia Wilde and Rooney Mara, of course, the last of whom stepped in as a replacement when Spike Jonez's first choice, Carey Mulligan, left the production due to scheduling conflicts. Okay, so one could argue that Mulligan didn't miss out on a particularly incredible character, but Mara's role - as Phoenix's character's ex-wife - was an important one, an essential part of making sure the movie worked. So whether or not the actress retrospectively regrets not being able to be apart of Her sort of relies on whether or not the movie she made instead provided her with a more thrilling part: the movie in question, which we can presume was Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis, sort of had her cast as a similar character to the one that she would have had in Her, albeit a little more aggressive (she played a jaded ex-lover in both). We wonder which movie Mulligan prefers, then.