Jonah Hill was on a quest to veer off the comedy course when he apparently turned down roles in two major blockbusters.
After his star turn in the breakout 2007 hit "Superbad," he was offered "any one of the three main parts in ','" he tells Bullet magazine. In other words, Hill could've played Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), or Alan (Zach Galifianakis) in the second highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever.
But that's not all: He also declined the opportunity to star as Shia LaBeouf's sidekick in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," the second most successful film of 2009, right behind "Avatar."
"They were both really big decisions, and ones that most people didn't understand," he admits. "I knew I could be a dramatic actor, but I also knew I couldn't go from 'Superbad' to 'Schindler's List.'"
His ballsy tactics have paid off, leading to his Oscar-nominated supporting part opposite Brad Pitt in 2011's "Moneyball" and a prime role in the upcoming Martin Scorsese drama "The Wolf of Wall Street," starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a money-hungry stockbroker.
On his competition for his "Wolf of Wall Street" part, Hill says, "I knew that I was being considered among a list of other actors, but not my contemporaries -- Andrew Garfield or Joseph Gordon-Levitt -- people who are usually up for the same stuff as me. I was hearing names like George Clooney."
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, for which the "This Is the End" star received some flak for seeming standoffish, Hill said, "I've done one of the biggest challenges you can do in Hollywood, which is transition from being a comedic actor to being a serious actor, and I'm really prideful of that. I could have made a billion dollars doing every big comedy of the last 10 years and didn't, in order to form a whole other life for myself. Now I have fulfillment doing both."
After his star turn in the breakout 2007 hit "Superbad," he was offered "any one of the three main parts in ','" he tells Bullet magazine. In other words, Hill could've played Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), or Alan (Zach Galifianakis) in the second highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever.
But that's not all: He also declined the opportunity to star as Shia LaBeouf's sidekick in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," the second most successful film of 2009, right behind "Avatar."
"They were both really big decisions, and ones that most people didn't understand," he admits. "I knew I could be a dramatic actor, but I also knew I couldn't go from 'Superbad' to 'Schindler's List.'"
His ballsy tactics have paid off, leading to his Oscar-nominated supporting part opposite Brad Pitt in 2011's "Moneyball" and a prime role in the upcoming Martin Scorsese drama "The Wolf of Wall Street," starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a money-hungry stockbroker.
On his competition for his "Wolf of Wall Street" part, Hill says, "I knew that I was being considered among a list of other actors, but not my contemporaries -- Andrew Garfield or Joseph Gordon-Levitt -- people who are usually up for the same stuff as me. I was hearing names like George Clooney."
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, for which the "This Is the End" star received some flak for seeming standoffish, Hill said, "I've done one of the biggest challenges you can do in Hollywood, which is transition from being a comedic actor to being a serious actor, and I'm really prideful of that. I could have made a billion dollars doing every big comedy of the last 10 years and didn't, in order to form a whole other life for myself. Now I have fulfillment doing both."
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