When you finally get that breakout role on a tv series or a movie, the natural reaction would be to ride on the hype and look for better contracts. Sometimes that pans out like Leo DiCaprio after Critters 3 or Bruce Willis in Die Hard, but sometimes it ends up in a career never materializing.
In this post, we’ll be looking at five actors who wasted opportunities by caring too much about the cash.
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Hilary Duff – Lizzie McGuire
With the success of the Lizzie McGuire movie in 2003, fans expected a sequel. However, it ended up becoming the end of Hillary Duff’s tenure as the teen sweetheart.
Duff’s mother, Susan, claimed that Hillary was only being paid $35,000 per episode and that it was unfair because she received six-figure offers from outside parties. This dispute ended laid to rest the plans for both a movie’s sequel and the TV show.
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Marcus Chong – The Matrix
If you’re wondering why Tank never showed up for the sequel of The Matrix, you’ll finally know why. Marcus Chong, the actor who plays Tank, one of the four survivors of the Nebuchadnezzar crew, apparently got too greedy.
He was offered $250,000 to reprise the role for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, but he declined the offer and asked for $1 million. Chong resorted to many tactics, renegotiating, suing, and even verbally threatening the filmmakers, but none of them worked out. He was even arrested for threatening the Wachowskis.
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Terrence Howard – Iron-man
Terrence Howard’s significance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is virtually non-existent now, but there was once a time when Terrence Howard could have potentially earned a lot more than he initially wanted if not for his greed.
It wasn’t Don Cheadle who first played Rhodey Rhodes, a.k.a. War Machine. Terrence Howard played him in Iron Man but no longer returned for the role in the sequel. Howard appeared in several shows, saying that he took a $1 million pay cut to make sure Robert Downey got cast as Tony Stark, and then several years later, he appeared again to say that none of it was true and he was just drunk when he initially said it. Nevertheless, it’s an opportunity wasted for what would have been 11 movies, two series’, and potentially even more.
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Robert Duvall – The Godfather
Although he reprises the role of Tom Hagen in the second movie, Robert Duvall fails to show up for the third and final installment of the series. Some speculated that this was because he wasn’t offered enough, but Duvall also says he didn’t reprise the role because someone else got paid way too much.
Instead of an on-screen death, the consigliere was just written off. Duvall also said he didn’t regret going back for the third film because it wasn’t as good as the other two.
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Sean Connery – James Bond
After five films starring James Bond, the actor was bored with the role and demanded $1 million and a percentage of the gross to play him in “You Only Live Twice.” The producers tried to bargain with George Lazenby, but Connery didn’t budge.
After a dis-satisfactory performance as Bond on “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” by Lazenby, the producers made amends and offered Connery $1.25 million to return for “Diamonds are Forever.”
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