DiCaprio suggested that his good friend Mark Wahlberg would be perfect for the role, and history agrees. “Boogie Nights is a movie I loved and I wish I would’ve done,” Said DiCaprio in GQ in 2008. DiCaprio also admitted that the role could have changed his career: “I’m not saying I would have. But it would have been a different direction, career-wise. I think they’re both great and I wish I could have done them both.”
Lindsay Lohan, The Hangover
Lindsay Lohan was originally offered the role of "the stripper" in The Hangover, but she chose to pass that offer onto Heather Graham. Lohan was 20 at the time of the film's production stage, and she thought that she was much too young to be playing the role she was offered.
“People love to attack her for everything, like: ‘Ha she didn’t see how great The Hangover was going to be. She turned it down,’” stated director Todd Phillips in an interview with THR. “She didn’t turn it down. She loved the script, actually. It really was an age thing.”
Thomas Jane, Mad Men
Jon Hammis best know for his position as Don Draper in Mad Men. This show established him as a Hollywood elite, but it could have done that for Thomas Jane too. Jane passed on the role because of his preconceived notion that AMC would play old movies instead of presenting Mad Men at an appropriate time of the day.