So tonight I was out with three friends celebrating one of their birthdays. The one with the birthday is a good friend, and one of his friends was one of the other three guys; someone I've seen / hung out with a handful of times over the years - I guess I'd call him a friend - but he's never been someone I've been super close with. Anyway, he's a fairly prominent screenwriter, and I knew he used to be an actor back in the late '90s; not a big name or anything, but had bit parts in a few things here and there. Well, tonight he told me something that blew my mind...
The role of Anakin in Episode II came down to him and Hayden Christensen.
He was acting in a play in New York at the time and George Lucas and the head of Lucasfilm casting, Robin Gurland, flew out to meet with him in person at a hotel after he tested quite a few times remotely. They had a four-hour meeting, and at the end of the meeting, Lucas literally told him that he was a better actor than Christensen, but that my buddy was just slightly too old (he was 22 at the time and Christensen was 19). Otherwise, my buddy would have been the one Lucas flew out to Skywalker Ranch to do a final test with Portman instead of Christensen. He said he was so heartbroken when he lost the role that he quit acting altogether and that's when he moved to LA to pursue writing.
I don't want to post his name here so this isn't Google-able, but he's no one anyone here has ever heard of. Still, I can't believe that I've known this guy on and off for 14 years and only heard about this story tonight. I was obsessed with the Episode II Anakin casting search back in the day, and to know that an acquaintance of mine was actually Lucas' first choice for the role is insane. The prequels really would have been so different with this guy - he's the opposite of a wooden actor/personality (though I don't know if anyone could have saved Lucas' dialogue) - and it's crazy to think how close those movies came to being even marginally better without Christensen in the role, easily my least favorite part of the prequels.