Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Could’ve Met on Set of Nolan’s First-Ever Thriller Hit
The story of a potentially successful collaboration of the director and the two famous actors, which failed, just as their marriage.
Nowadays participation in Christopher Nolan ’s projects is a dream for every young actor, as the acclaimed director has already given much recognition to his actors due to the hype and the number of accolades his movies receive. However, it’s quite surprising that there were some actors who rejected the master’s offers to work with him.
Nolan’s path towards his Oppenheimer Oscars started in 1998 with the neo-noir titled Following, which didn’t attract much attention, and, luckily, it was fixed in 2000 by the next movie titled Memento, featuring a young man, Leonard Shelby, who suffers from anterograde amnesia, a disease resulting in the inability to memorize things.
This psychological thriller was both a critical and commercial success, grossing $40 million over its $9 million budget, and acquired a cult status, as it greatly explored topics of memory, perception and mind games with its nonlinear inventive structure.
It turned out that Nolan offered the leading role to Brad Pitt, who read and even liked the Memento script, but the Fight Club actor had to refuse it due to his busy schedule.
The actor’s then-future (and now former) wife, Angelina Jolie, was in her turn auditioned in front of Nolan for the role of Leonard’s love interest, Natalie, but she also had to leave the promising project, being replaced by the Matrix actress, Carrie-Anne Moss.
Despite lacking such actors in its cast, Memento has received worldwide recognition, and one of the keys of its success and high scores is, undoubtedly, the main actor. Guy Pearce, who portrayed Leonard’s inner search of the past and, moreover, of his own self, became an excellent casting choice, as well as Moss.
It’s more than just surprising, but it was revealed that Nolan’s success hasn’t come out as a reason for Brad Pitt to star in one of his subsequent movies too.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor was given the Inception script, to which he didn’t commit, just like a decade ago, and eventually the leading role in one of the most popular 2010 sci-fi action films of the 21st century was given to Leonardo DiCaprio.
Time will tell whether we see collaboration between Nolan and Pitt or not, but it seems to be quite a fruitful director-actor duo. You can now stream Memento on Netflix and Prime and wonder about the parallel reality in which Pitt accepted the leading role.
Source: Yahoo! Movies UK, The Hollywood Reporter