When James Cameron is casting for a new movie, every Hollywood actor’s ears perk up (unless that person is Matt Damon, who turned down the chance to play Jake Sully in Avatar in return for 10% of the gross profit). Every actor comes out of the woodwork to battle it out in the mortifying audition process because they know that no Cameron-directed movie can fail.
Titanic is no different, and, in fact, there were so many now A-list actors who were then unknowns desperately trying to work their way into that title. Whether they lost out to Leonardo DiCaprio, turned the role down due to scheduling conflicts, or rejected the role simply because they didn’t like it, there were certainly some curious front runners for the role of Jack Dawson.
Matthew McConaughey
The rumor goes that Matthew McConaughey was actually offered the role of Jack by James Cameron himself, but that isn’t exactly the way it went. McConaughey came extremely close to landing the part of Jack, as he even auditioned alongside Kate Winslet, but he eventually lost out to DiCaprio.
As McConaughey was type-cast to rom-com roles, Jack would have been perfect for him. The Dallas Buyers Club star said himself that he really thought it was going to happen, but it wasn’t as if the actor landed on hard times, as by the time Titanic came out, he was already a bankable leading man.
Chris O’Donnell
At one point, Chris O’Donnell was one of the front runners for the role of Jack Dawson. At the time, O’Donnell wasn’t known for much outside of his role of Dick Grayson in Batman Forever.
However, unfortunately, it was reportedly the box office failure of Batman & Robin that kept him from getting the role of Jack. And while that isn’t exactly fair - as he wasn’t the sole reason the movie was so negatively received - in Hollywood, that’s sometimes just the way the cards fall.
Billy Crudup
Though Billy Crudup has said in the past that he has never been interested in playing a leading man, the only reason why he turned down the role was due to scheduling conflicts. The actor was busy shooting Without Limits at the same time, which had a polar opposite performance to Titanic at the box office, as it made less than $1 million on a $25 million budget.
And though it might have been a gut punch seeing that the movie made over $2 billion worldwide, the actor stands by his guns in believing he was right to down the role down. Crudup hates the intrusion DiCaprio still suffers from the movie, and he thinks that playing Jack would have sunk his privacy.
Johnny Depp
In the 90s, Johnny Depp was possibly the most in-demand actor working in Hollywood, so it only makes sense that he was shortlisted to star in one of the most expensive movies of all time. Not many people say no to James Cameron, but it was Johnny Depp who actually turned down the role of Jack simply because he didn’t like it.
Depp told Howard Stern that he struggled to get through the 180 page script, saying that he “labored” through it. But he also may have been too old, as he’s a whole 12 years older than DiCaprio. And though Depp still looked young for his age at the time, he simultaneously looked old enough to be playing an undercover FBI agent at the time, as he starred in Donnie Brasco the same year.
Macaulay Culkin
Macaulay Culkin is easily the youngest actor on the shortlist by far, as he would have been just 17 when the movie was released. However, casting actors is all based on how bankable they are, and at the time, Culkin was one of the most famous kids on the face of the Earth.
It’s hard to imagine Culkin in the role, but it would have done wonders for his career, as even to this day, 30 years after the fact, Culkin is still mainly known as the actor who played the annoying Kevin McCallister in Home Alone.
Christian Bale
Long before Christian Bale became known for gaining and losing weight for his leading roles, and way before producers and directors approached him to star in their movies, he often had to battle it out with DiCaprio for roles.
As DiCaprio was an unstoppable force at the time, Christian Bale kept losing out to the Titanic star so much that he grew envious, and he called DiCaprio his nemesis, and one of those roles was Jack Dawson. To make things worse for the actor was the reasoning Cameron gave to Bale about why he wasn’t a right fit - the director didn’t want two British actors playing Americans in lead roles, as Kate Winslet was already cast as Rose.
Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke is another actor who narrowly missed out on playing Jack. But just like Billy Crudup, Hawke is relieved he never got the part, as he said that watching DiCaprio in the role was like watching a Beatle, saying that “every woman wanted to f*** him and every guy wanted to fight him.”
Titanic would have been a big break for Hawke, as before 1997, he had never had much of a leading role except for the low budget romantic drama Before Sunrise. However, his biggest movie up to that point was released the same year as the Titanic, titled Gattaca; unfortunately, it bombed at the box office.
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise was practically offered the leading role in every movie that was in development in the 90s, and at one point, studio execs even wanted to change the name of Being John Malkovich to Being Tom Cruise.
There have even been so many roles that have been specifically written for Cruise only for him to turn them down. And though the role of Jack wasn’t specifically written with Cruise in mind, he came very close to starring in the movie, but as he was already an established star in the mid-90s, his asking price was simply too high.
River Phoenix
After starring in Stand by Me and blowing audiences away at such a young age, playing Young Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, and being one of the youngest actors to ever be nominated for an Academy Award, River Phoenix sadly passed away at the age of 23.
It’s rumoured that, when Cameron first started conceptualising Titanic, he wanted to build the cast around River Phoenix as Jack. And if Phoenix had never passed away in October of 1993, it’s extremely likely that it would have been him in the role, not DiCaprio.
Brad Pitt
There were a lot of roles that Brad pITT was almost cast in - and most shocking of all is that Pitt was almost cast as Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s remake - but he also came close to securing his place on the RMS Titanic too.
Interestingly enough, it wasn’t just Pitt who was in the running for Jack, but his then-wife, Jeniffer Aniston, was considered for the role of Rose as well. And, being the funny man that he is, Pitt hilariously mentioned that he would have shared the raft in his 2020 Golden Globe speech, given the controversy that there was enough room for Jack on the raft that Rose was lying on.