15 Casting Decisions That Could Have Altered Hollywood

Blake was one of many actresses vying for Natalie Portman's counterpart, the bad girl ballerina, in Black Swan, but Mila's dark hair, dance experience, and friendship with star Natalie Portman sealed her fate.

Now, if Blake's turn as Lily had come to pass, we'd never be able to look at the artisanal ballet slippers sold on Preserve in the same way.

It's the early aughts: Juicy Couture tracksuits are the height of style and celebrity couple nicknames don't even exist yet. In a roundabout way, we have Halle Berry to thank for the latter—she was tied up with X-Men 2 and had to drop out of Gigli, in which she'd been originally lined up as the female lead. J.Lo stepped into the role opposite Ben Affleck, and A-list supercouple and tabloid fave Bennifer was born. Gigli may have bombed, but we'll always have the delicious Bennifer moments in the "Jenny From the Block" video.

Considering the massive success of The Hunger Games books, it's no surprise that actresses were lining up to audition for the role of the fight-to-death underdog Katniss Everdeen. Shailene talked about trying out for the role but there's certainly no hard feelings: she thinks Jennifer is perfect for the role.

The role that made Julia Roberts a household name almost never came to be. The original Pretty Woman script was for a dark indie film with lots of grit (read: cursing and drugs). After several rewrites, the lead role of Vivian was at first offered to Meg Ryan, but she passed—Winona Ryder and Jennifer Connelly also auditioned, but eventually it was Julia's work in Steel Magnolias that led director Garry Marshall to offer her the part. The rest is hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold history.

Although Heigl went on to kvetch about her part in the Judd Apatow hit comedy, Anne Hathaway was first offered the lead role as an entertainment reporter who finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand. Anne ultimately passed, she told Marie Claire, because she couldn't fathom doing the graphic birthing scene at the end of the film—the prospect of a vagina double, specifically. And in retrospect, try reconciling that role with Anne's Oscar-winning turn as Fantine in Les Miserables.

You can almost always count on Courtney Love for an outrageous story—in a 2013 interview with Howard Stern, she said the team behind the Twilight series wanted her daughter, Frances Bean, for the part of Bella, but Frances passed because she thought the source material was sexist. We're paraphrasing here; Courtney wasn't quite so diplomatic (please note that link contains a lot of Courtney Love cussing).

The prospect of a world with no "Robsten" is too horrifying to behold, really. And let's not pretend Courtney wouldn't have been a crazed momager on set either, which could have jeopardized everything, i.e. the New Moon and Breaking Dawn sequels.

No xoxo for Lily Collins; she apparently thought her career was over when she lost out on the part of our favorite Upper East Side socialite and master schemer, Blair Waldorf. (This just goes to show how big a classy mindtrick Blair is, even in the real world.) She may not have scored the coveted headband or ruled from the steps of the Met, but Lily has gone on to star in films including The Blind Side and Mirror Mirror.

We don't know how Andy Cohen manages to get stars to confess their deepest darkest secrets so regularly on his Watch What Happens Live talk show (Maybe it's the open bar?), but best selling author, TV star and all-around boss Mindy Kaling recently spilled on a crushing professional disappointment: losing out on the bride's role in Bridesmaids (the part went to the brilliant Maya Rudolph).

Would a Wilson Phillips song lip-synched by Dr. Mindy Lahiri have sounded as sweet? Not that Bridesmaids could have been any better, but with Mindy in the mix it certainly wouldn't have been worse—well, not until you play the scenario out. What if she'd got so tied up with Bridesmaids she doesn't have time to write, Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?. No hit book means no The Mindy Project (making our Tuesday nights very sad indeed).

Age ain't just a number for Claire Danes. Thanks to the cult classic TV show My So Called Life, she was the ingénue that every director wanted to work with in the '90s. She turned down the part of Skylar in Good Will Hunting (even though she was rumored to be dating Matt Damon at the time) because she felt she was too young to play an Ivy League med student, and the role went to Minnie Driver instead. (And we've all seen Claire's cry face on Homeland, so we know exactly what would have played out if she'd found out Matt had dumped her while watching Oprah,as Minnie Driver infamously did.)

But on the flip side, she snagged the lead in Baz Luhrmann's modern adaptation of Romeo + Juliet because Luhrmann's original choice—Natalie Portman— looked too young and delicate when compared to leading man Leonardo DiCaprio, which is saying something because even DiCaprio looked young and delicate (and beautiful) in the movie.

Gwyneth Paltrow had her own Sliding Doors moment IRL with, wait for it, Vanilla Ice. It's hard to believe, but when super-connected Paltrow was getting her start in show business, she was offered the lead role in the Vanilla Ice's modern retelling of Marlon Brando's classic movie The Wild One, because crazy stuff like that happened in the '90s, apparently.

Her father, TV producer Bruce Paltrow, nixed the idea after reading a line about 69ing (um, awkward). Supermodel Naomi Campbell took the part instead—and Gwyneth went on to be cast by her godfather, Steven Spielberg, in Hook instead. Clearly this is an instance where daddy really did know best.

Director Doug Liman circled many of Hollywood's hottest actors to play the titular married assassins (Will Smith, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Johnny Depp were all considered), but eventually Nicole Kidman landed Jane Smith's role. She later dropped out, though (some reports say it was a lack of chemistry with Pitt, others cite a long The Stepford Wives shoot). Angelina signed on to play Mrs. Smith in her place; one mega-scandalous divorce and six children later, Brangelina are the reigning King and Queen of Hollywood.

And it's just too hard to imagine any other reality at this point. I mean, Bracole sounds like a dime store hemorrhoid cream or a type of fish.

Post-Mean Girls and pre-Wedding Crashers, McAdams considered joining the Fantastic Four franchise, but the Invisible Woman role eventually went to Jessica Alba, who had plenty of butt-kicking experience from her previous work on Dark Angel. Can you imagine a world where Rachel McAdams traded Noah Calhoun for the Human Torch?

Oh, and speaking of Noah, we all tear up watching The Notebook, but Jessica Biel might be crying for a different reason: After a screen test with Ryan Gosling, she lost out on a role that she desperately wanted. (Jessica told Elle she auditioned with Ryan during a break from her shooting horror flick The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—and a very quick break, apparently, because she was "covered in [fake] blood" throughout and that's not a very Allie Hamilton look.)

Picture this: Jessica and Ryan go method and fall in love on-set; they're all set to get hitched when Jessica runs off with the wedding singer—Ryan's one-time Mouseketeer co-star, one Justin Timberlake.

Casting the Mean Girls' Plastics proved to be about as elaborate as a four-way phone call: Rachel wanted to play Cady, but the studio thought, at 24, she was too old. (Boo, you whore.) Meanwhile, Lindsay Lohan wanted to play Regina George, but after Freaky Friday was an unexpected hit, the studio felt she couldn't play "mean." Amanda Seyfried also lost out on Regina, but producer Lorne Michaels then recommended her for dim-witted Karen.

Looking back though, seeing any of the lead actresses cast in any other role would be about as crazy as a world where "fetch" really happened.