A biopic about the life of '50s actor James Dean starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the leading role was very nearly made a few decades back, but there was one very important reason the director chose not to go through with it, a reason we didn't know until recently.
Michael Mann spoke out about the fare of that film and why its development never continued.
Helmed by Michael Mann, director of Heat and Miami Vice, he revealed in an interview with Deadline that the movie got scrapped because he couldn't find the right person to play Dean.
Well, he did, sort of.
"It was a brilliant screenplay," he said, "And then it's, 'Who the hell could play James Dean?' I found a chap who could play James Dean, but he was too young. It was Leo."
DiCaprio would have been about 19 at the time.
"From one angle, he totally had it with him. I mean, it's brilliance," Mann praised, ""He would turn his face in one direction and we see a vision of James Dean, and then he'd turn his face another direction and it's, 'No, that's a young kid.'"
He remembers the screen test, and had also spoken about it to Deadline back in 2016, saying, "We saw clips of Giant, and then he put me in the back of the car with that cowboy hat. But I was a very young-looking kid, even when I was young."
"I remember being incredibly moved by Jimmy Dean in East of Eden. There was something so raw and powerful about that performance," he recalled, "His vulnerability [...] his confusion about his entire history, his identity, his desperation to be loved. That performance just broke my heart."
Seems that particular role was never meant to be for him, but if Mann had rolled with it anyway, we all know DiCaprio would have done an amazing job.
h/t: People
