While it's hard to imagine now, Joss Whedon's iconic world-saver Buffy wasn't a hot ticket role – the show was a mid-season replacement on The WB, a network with no track record in the teen market.
Holmes reportedly turned it down because she wanted to finish high school, and the same casting director cast her on Dawson's Creek the following year. After Sarah Michelle Gellar was cast, several other actresses who had come close ended up in key supporting roles, including Charisma Carpenter and Julie Benz.
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3. John Cusack - Breaking Bad
To say that AMC were nervous about Breaking Bad at the development stage would be an understatement, and execs pushed for a big-name star. At the network's request, the role of Walter White was offered to Cusack and Matthew Broderick, but creator Vince Gilligan had his heart set on Bryan Cranston.
"We all still had the image of Bryan shaving his body in Malcolm in the Middle. We were like 'Really? Isn't there anybody else?'" an AMC executive admitted. Gilligan finally got his way after persuading the network honchos to watch Cranston's performance in X-Files episode 'Drive.'
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4. Alicia Silverstone - My So-Called Life
The year before Silverstone starred in Clueless, she was one of the frontrunners for the role of Angela Chase in ABC's acclaimed but short-lived teen drama series. Edward Zwick was keen to cast her, but his co-producer Marshall Herskovitz argued that Silverstone was too attractive to believably play the disaffected Angela.
"Alicia is so beautiful that that would have affected her experience of the world," he told The New Yorker. "People would have been telling her she was beautiful since she was 6 years old. You can't put that face in what's been written for this girl." A 13-year-old Claire Danes was cast in Silverstone's stead.