12 stars who got fired from a role — and then landed something much biggerJP MangalindanMon, November 9, 2026 at 12:00 AM UTC
Lisa Kudrow for ‘Friends’; Richard Gere poses for a studio portrait in the late 1970s; Hilary Swank at the Mann National Theatre in Westwood, CalifCredit: Reisig & Taylor/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty; American Stock/Getty; Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Getting fired is one Hollywood story rarely discussed on a red carpet. The business runs on momentum, and an actor who loses a job midstream isn’t exactly guaranteed to bounce back right away. But every so often, getting fired turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to them.
Lisa Kudrow lost Frasier, then landed Friends — after auditioning in front of the director who cut her in the first place. Mariska Hargitay says she lost a movie role by going home for Christmas; a few years later, she landed the longest-running live-action character in the history of primetime television. In his memoir, Sylvester Stallone revisits the greasy lunch that got Richard Gere fired from The Lords of Flatbush.
Keep reading for the lowdown on these stars — and more — and their legendary stories of losing an acting job before going on to land career-defining roles in much bigger movies and shows.
01 of 12
Gene Hackman, The Graduate
Gene Hackman in 1969Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
Before Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman was Mr. Robinson. Mike Nichols cast him as Anne Bancroft’s husband in The Graduate (1967), then decided during rehearsal that he looked too young for the part. (Bancroft was a year and a half younger than Hackman.) Murray Hamilton took over.
The sting never fully went away. “Mike Nichols didn’t think I was doing it well and so, one, two, three, I was fired,” Hackman told The Dallas Morning News in 1985, adding that seeing the film in TV listings still brought the feeling back.
The consolation came quickly. Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which he had filmed earlier, opened later in the year and earned Hackman his first Oscar nomination. He earned another for I Never Sang for My Father (1970), followed by The French Connection (1971), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor.
Hackman died in 2025, and it’s still hard to picture him as Mr. Robinson, pouring Benjamin a drink and urging him to sow a few wild oats. He was made for the chase scene.
02 of 12
Richard Gere, The Lords of Flatbush
Richard Gere poses for a studio portrait in the late 1970sCredit: American Stock/Getty
Richard Gere was supposed to play Chico in The Lords of Flatbush, the 1974 Brooklyn coming-of-age movie that gave early showcases to Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler.
According to Gere, he and Stallone never got along. In his memoir The Steps, the Rocky actor wrote that things boiled over during a lunch break in a car, when grease from Gere’s foil-wrapped chicken ran onto Stallone’s leg. Stallone elbowed him across the chest. One of them had to go, Stallone said, and it was Gere. Perry King took over the part.
(That wasn’t the end of the enmity between the two actors, however: Gere reportedly accused Stallone of hitting on then-wife Cindy Crawford in the days leading up to their 1994 split.)
Gere didn’t need to worry about his career post-Flatbush, at least. American Gigolo made him a sex symbol in 1980, An Officer and a Gentleman made him a movie star two years later, and Pretty Woman made him a permanent fixture in 1990. The Lords of Flatbush is a cult curio, but Gere became a cultural icon on his own terms.
03 of 12
Jerry Seinfeld, Benson
Jerry Seinfeld poses before a performance at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., on May 26, 1988Credit: Steve Kagan/Getty
In 1980, Jerry Seinfeld landed a recurring part on the Robert Guillaume-led sitcom Benson as Frankie, a messenger with comedy routines nobody wanted to hear. Asked in a 2014 Reddit AMA to name the lowest point in his career, he went straight back to the sitcom.
“I was on the show for three episodes, and then I got fired,” Seinfeld wrote. “And I thought that would be the only break I was ever going to get.” He called it “a youthful lack of perspective.”
The firing pushed him, he said, to become “a much better stand-up comedian so that I wouldn’t be dependent on other people.”
Within a year, he’d done his first Tonight Show set. Nine years after his Benson run, NBC handed him a sitcom with his name on it. In 1998, he ended Seinfeld while it was still the No. 1 show on television, reportedly turning down $5 million an episode to continue. Nobody got to fire him from that one. He left on top.
04 of 12
Lisa Kudrow, Frasier
Lisa Kudrow for ‘Friends’Credit: Reisig & Taylor/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
Lisa Kudrow was cast as Roz Doyle, Frasier Crane’s radio producer, and never shot a single scene. During the pilot’s run-through, director James Burrows told her it wasn’t working. Peri Gilpin, who had gone to the network alongside her, took over the role and kept it for 11 seasons.
“It was devastating to get fired,” Kudrow said on the SmartLess podcast in 2024, though she added that she has come around to Burrows’ view. The network had made a casting mistake, she said, and was simply correcting it.
A year later, Burrows was directing the Friends pilot. Kudrow said she was the only one of the six leads who had to audition for him. She of course landed the part of Phoebe, won an Emmy for the performance, and by the final seasons was earning $1 million an episode. Kudrow landed exactly where she belonged.
05 of 12
Ray Romano, NewsRadio
Ray Romano performs on ‘The Tonight Show With Jay Leno’ on June 2, 1994Credit: Margaret Norton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
Ray Romano was a stand-up comedian with almost no acting experience when he was cast on the original NewsRadio as an electrician named Rick.
“On day two, I got fired,” he said at the ATX TV Festival in 2026. The role was filled by comedian and voice actor Greg Lee, but even he didn’t last past the pilot. Ultimately, “Rick” was retooled into another electrician, Joe Garrelli, played by another stand-up: Joe Rogan.
Everybody Loves Raymond premiered on CBS in September 1996, which should have felt like vindication. It didn’t. “I’d just gotten fired from a sitcom, and this sitcom has my name,” Romano said on the same panel. “It was a little terrifying for me.” He didn’t move his family west until the show was renewed.
The sitcom ran nine seasons, won Romano three Emmys (including one for his lead performance), and still lives on via reruns decades later.
06 of 12
Mariska Hargitay, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
Mariska Hargitay in New York City in 1993Credit: Larry Busacca/WireImage
Long before she immortalized Olivia Benson, Mariska Hargitay was going to be a queen. Cast as the warrior Dulcea in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995), she flew to Australia in late 1994 for hair, makeup, and prosthetics, only to be kept on hold for weeks.
That December, as she explained on Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2019, she told the production she was going home for Christmas. The next month, she called to say she was ready.
“They’re like, ‘Sweetie, you’re good, don’t worry about it,’” she told Meyers before supplying the punchline herself: “And they fired me!”
Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, the actress originally cast as Dulcea, got the part back after recovering from surgery.
In 1999 came Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Hargitay has been a fixture on the iconic procedural ever since. In 2019, Benson became the longest-running live-action character in primetime TV history. The actress who lost a part over Christmas break has now spent 27 years refusing to leave.
07 of 12
Eric McCormack, Jenny
Eric McCormack at the premiere of CBS’ ‘Borrowed Hearts’ at the Museum of TV and Radio in Beverly Hills in 1997Credit: Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
In 1997, Eric McCormack landed a part on Jenny, NBC’s sitcom vehicle for Jenny McCarthy, and even filmed the pilot. When the show went to series, his character was gone. Not recast, but cut altogether. Jenny went on without him… although it didn’t last past that one season.
As McCormack told PEOPLE in 2023, a year later he was shooting the Will & Grace pilot when the network’s entertainment president, Warren Littlefield, walked over. “Aren’t you glad I fired you?” he asked.
The question answered itself. His decorated run as Will Truman, which included an Emmy win in 2001, lasted for eight original seasons and a three-season revival. Getting fired turned out to be the best thing Littlefield could have done for McCormack.
08 of 12
Hilary Swank, Beverly Hills, 90210
Hilary Swank at the Mann National Theatre in Westwood, Calif. in 1996Credit: Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Hilary Swank joined Beverly Hills, 90210 in its eighth season as single mom Carly Reynolds, with a two-year contract. She was written out after 16 episodes, with her final appearance airing in January 1998. The show’s ratings were sliding, which somehow made the rejection worse. Tori Spelling recalled on her rewatch podcast, 90210MG, that Swank came to her dressing room in tears.
“I got fired off of a show that no one watches,” Swank told Conan O’Brien in 2014. Two months later, she was cast as Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry (1999), a part she couldn’t have accepted had she stayed on the show. “I looked at it as a silver lining,” she said.
Swank won the Best Actress Oscar for that performance, followed by a second trophy five years later for Million Dollar Baby (2004), making her, by a wide margin, the most decorated person ever cut from the Peach Pit.
09 of 12
Robert Downey Jr., Ally McBeal
Robert Downey Jr. attends The 2006 National Design Awards at The Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt on Oct. 18, 2006 in New York CityCredit: David X Prutting/Patrick McMullan via Getty
Robert Downey Jr. was looking for a career comeback when David E. Kelley cast him in 2000, a week after his release from prison, as Ally’s new love interest, Larry Paul.
The actor had an Oscar nomination under his belt for Chaplin (1992), and his resume included roles in Short Cuts (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), and Bowfinger (1999). But Ally McBeal was his first recurring television role since an ill-fated one-year stint on Saturday Night Live in the mid-’80s.
The casting paid off beautifully. Ratings rose, Kelley stood by him through a setback in Palm Springs that November, and two months later, Downey won a Golden Globe.
Then, on April 24, 2001, Downey was arrested in Culver City, Calif. By that afternoon, Kelley announced that the season would finish without his scene-stealing supporting star. Larry had reportedly been set to marry Ally in the finale. The wedding never happened.
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Downey later told The Guardian that Ally McBeal marked his lowest point with addiction. Recovery took years, and he did the work. Acting-wise, he clawed his way back with widely acclaimed performances in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Zodiac (2007). Even so, it took some real convincing before studio execs allowed Jon Favreau to cast him in the title role in Iron Man (2008), for Marvel’s fledgling movie universe.
What followed was the highest-grossing franchise in film history and, years later, a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Oppenheimer (2023). The man written out of his own TV wedding became one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Few Hollywood comebacks have been as satisfying.
10 of 12
Will Arnett, Still Standing
Will Arnett during an appearance on ‘The Tonight Show With Jay Leno’ on March 29, 2007Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
By 2002, Will Arnett had shot four pilots, and the fourth was the cruelest. CBS’s Still Standing got picked up — but his character didn’t.
“When it went to series, my character got cut or I got fired,” he told Variety in 2004. “I’m not entirely sure. I know that both things happened.”
He swore off the next pilot season, but an Arrested Development script found him all the same. Deborah Barylski, the casting director on Still Standing, had opposed his firing, and she badgered his manager until Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz let him audition for the family’s idiot older brother and magician, Gob Bluth. The qualities that made him the wrong fit for one show got him cast on the other.
“This pilot, by far, was the best I ever read — and I hope that insults every other pilot I worked on,” Arnett added. The scene-stealing performance landed Arnett his first Emmy nomination and made him a comedy fixture with acclaimed roles on shows from 30 Rock to BoJack Horseman.
Still Standing ran four seasons. Arnett, thanks in large part to a casting director who refused to give up on him, got a decades-long career.
11 of 12
Jon Hamm, Related
Jon Hamm attends Fresh stART’s Fourth Annual Art Sale And Exhibition at Santa Monica Art Studios on Feb. 12, 2005 in Santa Monica, CalifCredit: Marsaili McGrath/Getty
Jon Hamm spent a decade in Los Angeles as a working actor in the least glamorous sense: years of waiting tables, getting dropped by an agency, and landing TV stints on Providence and The Division that didn’t make him a star.
In 2005, he shot the pilot for The WB’s Related, a dramedy about four sisters, featuring Lizzy Caplan and Jennifer Esposito. When the show went to series, Dan Futterman had Hamm’s role. Hamm and Caplan reunited during a 2015 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where they reflected on their very different experiences after the show was picked up.
“I didn’t really get to spend more time with Jon, though, because one of us got fired after the pilot,” said Caplan. “Spoiler alert, it wasn’t Lizzy,” Hamm added, with a smile. “They went a different way — I was recast [as] a woman!”
In 2007, Mad Men premiered. Creator Matthew Weiner had to push AMC hard to cast a relative unknown in the lead — and in the end, Hamm’s Don Draper became one of the most iconic characters in television history.
He was an overnight sensation… who just happens to have been in town since the mid-’90s. The St. Louis native won an Emmy and two Golden Globes for the performance, and hasn’t lacked for work since.
12 of 12
Ryan Gosling, The Lovely Bones
Ryan Gosling at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills in 2005Credit: Amy Graves/WireImage
Ryan Gosling was 26 and beloved for his roles in The Notebook (2004) and Half Nelson (2006), for which he earned an Oscar nomination, when Peter Jackson cast him as the grieving father in The Lovely Bones.
Gosling decided a ’70s Pennsylvania dad should weigh 210 pounds — and he got himself there on a steady diet of melted Häagen-Dazs. As he later recalled, he and Jackson barely talked during pre-production. Just as cameras were set to roll, he was out, and Mark Wahlberg was in.
“We had a different idea of how the character should look,” Gosling told The Hollywood Reporter in 2010. “I just showed up on set, and I had gotten it wrong.”
Jackson finally spoke about it in 2026 at the Cannes film festival, where he was receiving an honorary Palme d’Or. He wouldn’t get into specifics, but he called Gosling a “fantastic actor” and took the blame himself: “Anytime we recast an actor, it’s actually our fault.”
By then, Gosling had long since moved on. The universe had other plans — namely, a run of career-defining roles: Blue Valentine (2010), Drive (2011), The Nice Guys (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Project Hail Mary (2026), and Oscar-nominated turns in La La Land (2016) and Barbie (2023).
Source: Entertainment
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