Aragorn
The main protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn (first introduced as Strider) would eventually go to Viggo Mortensen. Mortensen was actually a last-minute replacement for Stuart Townsend, who Peter Jackson fired the day before principal photography began believing Townsend was too young for the role and decided he wanted an actor about 20 years older. And although Mortenson was 38 at the time, if they had gone with someone 6 years his junior, we would have had quite a different Lord of the Rings trilogy.
And who might the younger actor have been? None other than the man who once described his acting style as “nouveau shamanic”, the offbeat and quirky Nicholas Cage. The reason we didn’t get to see the crazy acting styles of Cage, well we’ll let the 57 year old explain himself, “There were different things going on in my life at the time that precluded me from being able to travel and be away from home for three years,”
