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Playing Star Wars' Anakin Skywalker was a dream gig for Ryan Phillippe - but he told he was too old, especially for Natalie Portman
Imagine if Ryan Phillippe had said Anakin's iconic "I hate sand" line from Star Wars: Episode II. What a world.
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The late '90s vibes were almost even stronger in the Star Wars prequels.
Ryan Phillippe revealed to Variety recently that he nearly won the role of Anakin Skywalker for Episodes I-III. However, because he was 29 years old at the time, he was "deemed too old to play opposite Natalie Portman, who's seven years younger than him."
Remember, Padmé is five years older than Anakin in the story, so selling Phillippe as significantly younger than he actually was would have been an uphill battle with audiences.
Still, Phillippe wasn't cut up about it. He told Variety, “Being a kid born in the ’70s, I was like, ‘What a dream that would’ve been.' But I think things happen for a reason and it’s easy to make peace with that. Part of what we have to develop as actors is that thick skin that comes along with rejection or maybe things not going the way you wanted in a particular project or potential job. So there’s an element of being able to let go and release and not spend too much time thinking about those things.”
Phillippe is perhaps best known as appearing in the original I Know What You Did Last Summer movie from 1997. The franchise is set to return with a new film of the same title later this year, very much in the vein of the 2018 Halloween. And of course, Jennifer Love Hewitt is appearing in the reboot.
In the meantime, you can catch Phillippe in Motorheads on Amazon Prime Video when it drops on May 20.
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